Hello! I don't understand why answer E is the correct answer choice. The sample size being unrepresentative, in my mind, doesn't follow what the passage says. The explanation for E being correct was that the passage was talking about the recidivism rate for former inmates as a whole, not just for those that receive the cosmetic surgery. The passage says towards the end "of the inmates who got the cosmetic surgery...". Thanks in advance!
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The answer I picked was D, by the way. I took the "has a powerful rehabilitative effect" from the passage as referring to the inmates who receive the surgery, so the only issue I found with the logical reasoning of the argument was that rehabilitation was not a moral issue.
Emil-KunkinAugust 5, 2022
Hi Michele,
The passage tells us that the rate was lower for those who got the surgery than for those who did not, and based on this, the author concludes that the surgery was rehabilitative.
However, the surgery was only offered to the best behaved inmates. So, the inmates who behaved well and got the surgery may have already been less likely to reoffend than the average inmate. Therefore, we cannot say the surgery made them less likely to reoffend, since they might have been unlikely to reoffend in the first place. We have no idea if the surgery helped to rehabilitate them or if they were just less likely to reoffend from the beginning.
Regarding D, I don't think it matters if it is a moral issue, since the conclusion is descriptive, not prescriptive.
