A
Many university libraries have begun to charge higher and higher fines for overdue books and periodicals as a way of passing on increased journal subscription costs to library users.
B
A university library’s acquisition budget usually represents only a small fraction of its total operating budget.
C
Publishing a scholarly journal is an expensive enterprise, and publishers of such journals cannot survive financially if they consistently lose money.
D
Most subscribers to scholarly journals are individuals, not libraries, and the subscription rates for individuals have generally remained unchanged for the past several years.
E
The majority of scholarly journals are published no more than four times a year.
Company spokesperson: Household Products magazine claims that our Filterator X water filter does not remove chemical contaminants in significant amounts. This attack on the quality of our product is undermined by the experience of the millions of Filterator X owners who are satisfied with the product’s performance.
Summarize Argument
The company spokesperson concludes that the attack by Household Products magazine that Filterator X water filters do not remove significant amounts of chemical contaminants is inaccurate. He supports this by appealing to the experience of millions of people who own FIlterator X filters and are satisfied with their performance.
Notable Assumptions
The company spokesperson assumes that the fact that millions of customers are satisfied with their Filterator X filters means that the filters must be removing significant amounts of chemical contaminants from the water. This means that he also assumes that customers are able to tell whether their filters are removing chemical contaminants.
A
Household Products did not evaluate whether the Filterator X water filter significantly improved the taste of drinking water.
This doesn’t weaken the argument because it doesn’t deal with the question of whether or not the filters actually remove chemical contaminants from water. Customers may be satisfied because of improved taste, but this doesn’t tell us anything about the chemical contaminants.
B
Most Filterator X owners have no way to determine how effectively the product removes chemical contaminants from water.
This weakens the argument by showing that the company spokesperson’s assumption is false. Just because customers are satisfied doesn’t mean that the filters are removing chemical contaminants.
C
People whose household water contains chemical contaminants are more likely than other people to buy a Filterator X water filter.
The fact that Filterator X customers have very contaminated water doesn’t change the attack that the filters aren’t effectively removing those chemical contaminants. So this doesn’t weaken the spokesperson’s conclusion that the attack is unfounded.
D
Very few people who own a Filterator X read Household Products on a consistent basis.
Whether or not Filterator X customers read Household Products is irrelevant to the argument and doesn’t weaken the spokesperson’s conclusion that the magazine’s attack on the filters is false.
E
Household Products’ evaluations of Filterator X water filters have been consistently negative.
This doesn’t weaken the argument because it doesn’t address the assumption that customer satisfaction accurately reflects the filters’ effectiveness.