The government has recently adopted a policy of publishing airline statistics, including statistics about each airlin...

JeremyG on April 15, 2019

Thirding the request for an explanation here. If possible, could you please also explain why C is not a desirable answer choice? Thank you!

Ravi on April 16, 2019

@wills and @JeremyG,

Happy to help.

(A) says, "fails to consider that, even if the reports are incomplete,
they may nevertheless provide the public with important information
about airline safety"

(A) astutely points out that the argument does not consider that the
reports could be incomplete but still provide value and usefulness to
the general public. Thus, (A) captures the vulnerability of the
argument, so it's our correct answer choice. @wills, it's important to
note that just because something is incomplete, it doesn't necessarily
mean that it's completely wrong.

(C) says, "presumes, without providing justification, that information
about airline safety is impossible to find in the absence of
government disclosures"

The argument appears to make the assumption that the airline
statistics that the government is reporting were not easily available
to the public before the implementation of the new policy. However,
this does not necessarily mean that the argument is also assuming that
the information was impossible to find. As a result, we can get rid of
(C).

Does this make sense? If either or both of you have any more
questions, let us know!

aonyonyi on November 20, 2019

I'm still not 100% sure why C is incorrect. Please explain further.

shunhe on January 1, 2020

Hi @aonyonyi and @JeremyG,

Another issue with (C) is that the wording it uses is simply too strong. Nowhere does the author presume that it is IMPOSSIBLE to find information about airline safety in the absence of government disclosures. This is just not a fact that the author needs to presume, and can't be supported by the stimulus. Always be on the lookout for extreme language - while there are cases in which they may be in an answer, absolutes like "impossible" or "always" more often than not make a claim too extreme, and therefore incorrect. Hope this helps!