PT7.S1.Q14 - marine biologists had hypothesized

babybenny

I am having hard time to see the relevance of the answer E.
And I have no idea why B is wrong.
Can anyone explain me why E is right and B is wrong?

Thanks!

Climb_to_170

Hi!

So this is clearly well after the fact but I figured I would give my reasoning for anyone who comes along later and needs clarification.

Q14 is a Necessary Assumption question. Therefore, we need to evaluate which answer choice allows the conclusion to hold. We can do this by negating each answer choice to see if the argument falls apart.

Stimulus:

Marine biologist have a hypothesis that says lobsters will eat one another (EOA) out of hunger (H). While this is a NA question and not a SA question, I still find it helpful to present the hypothesis as psuedo-conditional statement: H -> EOA

However, the author presents a counterexample of the hypothesis by noting a specific trap of eight lobsters that lasted 2 whole months without eating each other. 'How can this be?,' the author asks. With that information, the author concludes the marine biologist are clearly wrong in their hypothesis.

Pre-AC analysis:

Okay! So we have a conflict that the author is taking a side on: the hypothesis is wrong. Why? Because we found an example of lobsters that did not eat each other (/EOA). But wait just a minute! If we are to prove the hypothesis wrong, we need to show that the lobsters were hungry. If the eight lobsters in the trap were never hungry then there's no way we are able to show the hypothesis is not still possible. Let's see if any of the answer choices do that:

AC B: says that two months is the longest known period eight or more lobsters have been trapped together. This seems good at first but with a more careful evaluation, one can see how little this does to the argument. So what if there's actually another trap where 100 lobsters were trapped together for 3 months? Our hypothesis and conclusion have nothing to do with length of time or number of lobsters but whether or not hungry lobsters will eat each other.

AC E: This is exactly what we need to show the hypothesis could be a failure. AC E is saying that the lobsters eventually became hungry. Therefore, this allows the author's conclusion of not(H -> EOA) to remain true. Now, let's take the negation of AC E. That would say the lobsters had enough food to ward off hunger. Therefore, the example given can't possibly be used as a counterexample! If I say X -> Y and you show me an example of /X -> /Y then you have done nothing to discredit my argument. However, if you show an example of X -> /Y then you have effectively caused a paradox in my hypothesis.