Q9 - Yu: The menu at Jason's Restaurant states that

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Weakens

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: At least one food served at Jason's Restaurant contains products grown with chemical pesticides.
Evidence: I went to the grocery store where Jason buys produce for Jason's Restaurant, and at that grocery store I saw workers unloading produce from the truck of a company who uses chemical pesticides on all crops.

Answer Anticipation:
We have to argue the Anti-Conclusion, so GIVEN THAT people were unloading produce from the truck of a pesticide-using company into the grocery store where Jason buys produce for his restaurant, HOW CAN WE STILL ARGUE THAT no food at Jason's Restaurant contain products with pesticides?

My first reaction is just, "Maybe the grocery store people were unloading the regular produce that average schmos like me buy, whereas Jason buys produce from the Organic section of the grocery" (and that produce comes a different time from a different truck from a different company). We could get even more exotic and say, "Just because it came off a MegaFarm truck doesn't mean it was MegaFarm produce". Maybe some organic farmer ships her pesticide free produce to grocers via MegaFarms shipping company.

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) It doesn't matter what Jason knows or doesn't know. It only matter whether he's buying or not buying pesticide-laced produce for the restaurant.

(B) This is tempting at first, but if Jason serves ANY food grown with pesticides, then the author wins. So knowing that other ingredients were pesticide-free doesn't shoot down the current accusation that the produce Jason is buying at Kelly's is tainted.

(C) YES, ultimately. This kinda weakens, as it opens the door for the idea that Jason could be shopping at Kelly's, where some of the produce has pesticides, but mindfully reading labels to only buy stuff that's pesticide free. I would have kept this on a first pass but hoped/expected for a more impactful answer.

(D) Safe vs. not safe is out of scope. We're only investigating "does any of the produce Jason is buying at kelly's have pesticides on it?"

(E) We really don't care about "most people", and the idea of "they would never KNOWINGLY buy produce with pesticides" obscures our investigation: is Jason, knowingly or unknowingly, buying produce with pesticides?

Takeaway/Pattern: Weak correct answers like this one are a reminder why it's crucial to think through possible objections before you dive into the answer choices. We had already thought about the fact that Kelly's grocery might carry produce WITH and produce WITHOUT pesticides, so we prepared a possible objection that when Jason goes to that grocery, he seeks out the produce that didn't have pesticides on it. (C) helps us to make that line of objection by simultaneously revealing that Kelly's does indeed sell pesticide-free produce and also that most of this pesticide-free produce is labeled so that Jason can buy the good stuff.

#officialexplanation

[N3rve_3644]

I struggled with this question after narrowing it down to B and C during the test, as it seemed to me that both of these answer choices required additional assumptions: to make answer choice B promising, I had to assume that Jason substitutes products treated with chemical pesticides that can be found at Kelly's store with pesticide-free products from the mentioned alternative suppliers; to make answer choice C promising, I had to assume that Jason actually reads labels while shopping produce. I couldn't decide which one required the least assuming, so circled B and moved on.

(C) YES, ultimately. This kinda weakens, as it opens the door for the idea that Jason could be shopping at Kelly's, where some of the produce has pesticides, but mindfully reading labels to only buy stuff that's pesticide free. I would have kept this on a first pass but hoped/expected for a more impactful answer.

After reviewing the question and this answer choice, I'm still not convinced that we can use product labeling to undermine Yu's argument for the reasons mentioned above. I understand that this is a weaken question, and we don't have to completely disprove the author's argument - we only need to bring up the possibility of Yu's conclusion being wrong. This line of reasoning, however, doesn't do much to eliminate answer choice B .

After spending more time thinking about this question I think the validity of answer choice C as the correct one rests on the information given to us in the first two lines of this answer choice. We are told that the majority of the pesticide-free produce at Kelly's store are labeled. I think it's safe to assume from the bold part that Kelly's store carries at least some pesticide-free produce (it could be a very small number: for instance, the store has only two labeled bags of lettuce out of three that are pesticide-free). If that is true, then there is a possibility that Jason buys exclusively pesticide-free products from this store which would undermine Yu's conclusion.


Am I overthinking this?

[TiffanyH940]

Is there a difference between weakening the claim and weakening the argument? For example, if weakening the claim is the same as weakening the conclusion, and different from weakening the argument, then this question should be treated as trying to counter Yu's conclusion, that Jason's restaurant can't be pesticide-free.

[LeonC133]

Hey guys, I am more related to B answer.

[ohthatpatrick]

Yes, there is a subtle difference between weaken ARGUMENT vs. CLAIM.

An ARGUMENT is composed of at least two claims:
the conclusion and at least one supporting idea.

A CLAIM is just one independent clause; a sentence can have more than one claim in it.
I just wrote ^ a sentence composed of two claims.

This question stem seems unintentionally sloppy to me. Yu actually makes a whole handful of claims, so it's pretty insane for the question stem to just say "claim", singular.

As for (B) ... this does nothing to shoot down the concern that Yu has raised.
- we know Jason buys his restaurant's produce from Kelly's
- we know that Kelly's carries some produce from MegaFarm, which uses pesticides on its crops.

Yu is trying to use these two facts to claim that Jason's restaurant DOES have food grown with pesticides.

(B) says that Jason buys others stuff from other suppliers.
Cool, but we still know he buys all the restaurant's produce from Kelly's. Until we shoot down the concern that Jason is buying pesticide-laced produce from Kelly's, we haven't affected Yu's argument.

A previous poster was thinking, "What if Jason swaps out a pesticide-free version of an ingredient, from these other supplies, for a pesticide-laden version of that ingredient that would be be available at Kelly's." But we couldn't use that type of story to say that "Jason buys some pesticide-free produce from an other supplier" since we were told that Jason buys the produce for his restaurant from Kelly's.