Q2 - Companies have recently introduced

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
ID the Agreement

Stimulus Breakdown:
J: Companies have released anti-bact household cleaning products. People wanting to minimize bacteria in their house should use anti-bact cleaning products.
K: Using anti-bact cleaning products can be harmful, because they eventually breed super-bacteria. So we should not have anti-bact cleaning products.

Answer Anticipation:
Overall, these two mostly DISagree, so we have to look for some point of consensus. They both agree with Jake's first claim, that anti-bact products do exist. They definitely disagree with J's second claim. Hard to anticipate how they'd phrase a correct answer, so let's just try to find something we think we could infer from both parties' statements.

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This seems reasonable. If J didn't believe this, he wouldn't recommend them for people trying to minimize bacteria. If K didn't believe this, she wouldn't have distinguished the "super bacteria" that SURVIVE the use of these products from other bacteria.

(B) Neither person talks about "dirt".

(C) J never talks about this.

(D) Neither person implied this, even though J did mention the existence of some people for whom household bact are a concern.

(E) They completely disagree on this point.

Takeaway/Pattern: The hardest part of this problem is making sure we notice the word 'agree' in the question stem, since 90% or more of these are asking "How do they DISagree?", making (E) the obvious bait.

#officialexplanation

[tksiggelakis]

I did this question and I picked E, however it said the answer is A. This is odd because it seems that they do not talk about common bacteria in the Jake's part of the argument. An explanation from professionals would be ideal, thanks guys.

[mselvaratnam]

I'm no pro, but this might help. They do talk about common bacteria in Jake's statement: "cleaning products that kill common bacteria."

The fact that they agree about this is a bit subtle. K describes common bacteria that survive the use of products w/ antibacterial agents, suggesting that not all bacteria survive. She would probably make it more explicit that all bacteria survive if that were true.

And she uses the word "also" in the beginning of her statement "but studies also suggest," meaning that she's adding on to Jake's statement rather than contradicting him, at least in this point of the argument.

So basically she's affirming Jake's premise, and adding a piece of information that leads her to a different conclusion. But the premise is what they agree on.

Bit tricky for a #2, that's for sure. I got this wrong because I was stupid and skimmed over the Q.Stem, assuming it said "disagree."

[WaltGrace1983]

Very surprised to get an "agree" question. I haven't done too many of the most recent PT's, but I didn't even know these questions existed.

The above explanation is great. I just wanted to add the wrong answers too!

(B) We know absolutely nothing about the removal of dirt. For all we know, Jake and Karolinka could strongly disagree or agree on this yet, since this is completely unsupported by both parties, let's just move on.

(C) We know that K believes this to be so but we aren't so sure about J. J never mentions anything and it looks like he only gives us the sheer benefits of the cleaning product.

(D) We might say that K believes this to be so, hence why she says that no one should use the cleaning product. However, we don't really know about J and, if we even assume that he knows about K's facts she pointed out, he still believes that people should use the product anyway!

(E) This is the easiest one to eliminate. We know that J agrees while K strongly disagrees. This was probably a trap answer for those that thought the question was to find a disagreement.