Q3 - Food columnist: Only 2 percent of imported seafood

[christine.defenbaugh]

Question Type:
Evaluate

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: To increase chance of your seafood being safe, buy only domestic seafood.
Evidence: Only 2% of imported seafood is even inspected.

Answer Anticipation:
Ah, evaluate questions - a sort of non-committal cousin of the strengthen/weaken. We need to find a question whose answer could make the conclusion more or less likely. The conclusion engages in a comparison: it's safer to go for domestic seafood than imported seafood. And at a glance, 2% sounds like a dreadfully low amount to be inspecting! But that evidence isn't comparative - it's only about the imported seafood. Since that's only one side of the coin, it would be useful to find the same info about domestic seafood to see if it supports the recommendation to only buy domestic. What if even LESS of the domestic seafood is inspected? That would hurt the argument. And if lots more of the domestic stuff is inspected, that would bolster this author's claim. (Any other safety comparisons between the two types of seafood could be useful too.)

Correct answer:
E

Answer choice analysis:
(A) I love that this answer looks to all health risks - the broadness here is great, as our conclusion is similarly broad when it refers to something being 'safe to eat'. But this question doesn't differentiate between imported and domestic seafood - it just lumps them together. That information can't support (or weaken) a conclusion that's focused on comparing the two against each other.

(B) Same problem as (A) - no differentiation between domestic and imported. We also don't really care what kinds of health risks there are, just whether they exist and in what quantity/severity.

(C) Out of scope - we don't care about food other than seafood, since the conclusion is only about seafood!

(D) Out of scope - we don't care about food other than seafood, since the conclusion is only about seafood!

(E) Classic answer - it completes the comparison the stimulus started. The stim gave us one percentage, this question's answer would give us the other, and bam, we have comparative evidence to support (or weaken!) the comparative conclusion.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Comparisons are all over the LR section. With a comparative conclusion, your heavy hitters for relevance are going to be bits of comparative information. Sometimes you get these comparisons in pieces - one half of a comparison already given in the stimulus, and the other half in the answer choice. That's just as useful as a complete comparison in an answer choice!

#officialexplanation