#1 - Advertisement: Omnicide kills more species of insects than any other insecticide.

[Hanin Abu Amara]

Complete Question Explanation

Weaken. The correct answer choice is (B).

This is an ad that concludes that Omnicide is the best insecticide for home gardeners because it kills more species than any other insecticides and that this is good for gardeners who can't determine which insects are destroying their plants.

Our job is to weaken the argument. Make it at least 1% worse. The ad here claims that it is especially good for home gardeners who can't determine which insects are destroying their plants. But there is no indication which insects Omnicide kills. We just know that it kills more species than any other insecticide.

What if killing the most species isn't a good thing? Our prephrase is going to focus on showing that maybe Omnicide kills good insects, or too many insects.

Answer choice (A): This does not weaken because those competitors still don't kill as many. They kill almost as many which doesn't impact the argument.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. If Omnicide kills beneficial insects then this weakens the conclusion that it is the best for home gardeners.

Answer choice (C): Whether the plant is healthy or not wasn't the concern of the stimulus. We simply care about how many insects we kill. This is irrelevant

Answer choice (D): Profitability doesn't give us insight into whether omnicide is the best for home gardeners and as such this is irrelevant

Answer choice (E): Whether it kills things other than insects doesn't give us insight into whether the conclusion is true or not and this is irrelevant as well.

[gwlsathelp]

Question type: weaken

So I selected A) "some of Omnicide's competitors kill almost as many species of insects as Omnicide does," but the correct answer is B) "many insect species are beneficial to garden plants, and Omnicide kills most of these beneficial species." I see how this weakens the argument as it attacks the last part of the conclusion. I did not like this answer that's why I chose A) because it would indicate that others may be just as good as Omnicide, thus undermining it's claim that it's the best.

Please, someone explain why B) is the correct answer. This whole section was particularly difficult.

[Adam Tyson]

The evidence is that Omnicide kills the most species. The conclusion is that is therefore the best. Assuming that "kills the most" is the correct criterion, some other product killing almost as many wouldn't weaken the claim that Omnicide is the best, because Omnicide still kills more. This would be similar to saying "my friend Todd is the tallest guy I know" and trying to weaken it by saying "your buddy Bill is almost as tall as Todd." Todd is still taller, and the claim about Bill does nothing to undermine that!

B weakens the argument by showing that "kills the most" may not indicate that it is the best. If it's killing a bunch of good things that I would rather not kill, that's a problem with the product that might mean it is NOT the best. "Hey, here's this great product that destroys the things you want to keep around in your garden" would not be a very good advertisement! Thus, answer B shows a problem with the product, and that should at least make us doubt the claim that it is the best. Perhaps a more targeted pesticide that only kills the stuff you want to kill, and not the things you don't want to kill, would be better for a home gardener?

[mkarimi73]

Why is (C) and (E) wrong?

[atierney]

Both of them address issues not in the scope of the argument. C talks about plant health and E talks about pests other than insects. These are both irrelevant in considering whether Omnicide is the best insecticide.