Q10 - millions of irreplaclbe exhibits

[gplaya123]

whats wrong with A and B??

[rinagoldfield]

Thanks for your post, gplaya123 (also, nice name).

This is an assumption question (presupposes=assumes), so let’s start by unpacking the argument core:

certain museum exhibits have helped scientists in the past

--->

we should raise $$ to preserve the museum exhibits that will be most valuable to scientists in the future

What’s the gap here?

Well for one thing, there’s the jump between past and future. How can we know which exhibits future scientists will find useful? Time travel hasn’t been developed yet...

Let’s go to the answer choices.

(A) has a bunch of term shifts. "Irreplaceable" is much stronger than "most valuable," and "overriding economic considerations" is much stronger than "raising funds." Already, this answer choice is too extreme.
But let’s say we take out those term shifts. Then this answer choice would basically say "valuable exhibits should be preserved!" This essentially restates the original conclusion. Any answer choice that tells us something we already know is wrong. Remember, assumptions are ALWAYS unstated.

(B) isn’t assumed. The stimulus talks about museum exhibits naturally decaying, not being actively destroyed. More importantly, the stimulus never describes how to determine the scientific value of museum exhibits. Perhaps scientific value can be assessed by scientific analyses, or perhaps by psychic readings. We don’t know if scientific analyses will be used, so we don’t need to know whether or not such analyses would harm exhibits.

(D) beautifully matches the assumption above. HOW on earth can we determine what will be valuable to future scientists??? The argument never lets us know, and (D) points this out. (D) is correct.

In terms of the other answer wrong choices...

(C) only deals with information from the premise. What about preserving exhibits for future scientists?

(E) undermines the argument. If exhibit preservation is impossible, then the argument collapses.

[Camiller]

Hi, I have a question for the geeks. Is the author of this argument equivocating "irreplaceable exhibits" (in the background info./support) with "those exhibits that will be most valuable to science in the future" (in the conclusion), or is the author making a qualification from the "millions of irreplaceable exhibits...that are allowed to decay" to "at least those exhibits that will be most valuable to science in the future"?

[Camiller]

Also, does the negation of (D) oppose the link between the premises and the conclusion, or does it only oppose the conclusion? I eliminated (D) because I didn't think it helped bridge the gap between the premises and the conclusion; it seemed to only help the conclusion.

[ohthatpatrick]

The conclusion is a qualified subset, not all the millions. That just gives you some context about how prevalent the possible loss of cool stuff could be.

"From those millions, we should raise funds to preserve at least this-subset-of-exhibits"

Good point with negating (D). We stress the argument core because MOST correct answers (by a vast majority) relate to the core.

But there are definitely Strengthen / Weaken correct answers that only really deal with the plausibility of the conclusion.

And Necessary Assumption is literally just
"Which of the following, if false, would most weaken?"

So you're right that (D), negated, is really just throwing an objection at the solution in the conclusion, not at the background problem / potential for losing important information that is described in the evidence.

[LolaC289]

I'll admit that (D) is the best out of the five. But I am a little bit confused about the role played by the "must" in the author's conclusion. Should we interpret this to "should" or "will"? If he is only saying "funds should be raised to preserve ...those will be the most valuable in the future", I think it is more like a principle. Then does it matter if we can't actually achieve it?

For example, if Lily says: we should raise money to help those who needed help the most.
Does it matter that we can't actually tell who needed help the most?
Even if we can't, it does not mean that what Lily says is wrong, right?

However, if this "must" should be interpret into something like "will", then I totally understand why (D) is correct.

Also, I am having trouble seeing the support structure here. I just found the supporting sentence really weird...like what does "analyses of eggs from museums" have to do with "museum exhibits", and "pesticide study", nowhere links this up with "most valuable to science"...All these gaps were just crammed my mind that I failed to see how this sentence really supports his argument.