Our conclusion is: There are, "at the very least, some misgivings about safety on the part of those responsible for the policy."
Why? If the claim that the dumping of nuclear waste posed no threat to people living nearby were true, then there would be no reason for not locating sites in areas of dense population. However the policy of dumping nuclear waste is to only dump it in the more sparsely populated regions.
How do we weaken the Sufficient & Necessary statement: "If the claim that the dumping of nuclear waste posed no threat to people living nearby were true, then there would be no reason for not locating sites in areas of dense population." We could weaken it by showing the sufficient condition present without the necessary condition.
Answer choice (C) does just this: "Dumping of nuclear waste poses fewer economic and bureaucratic problems in sparsely populated areas than in densely populated areas."
Answer choice (C) allows for the possibility of the claim that the dumping of nuclear waste poses no threat to people living nearby to be true (i.e. the sufficient condition is present), while there are still reasons for not locating sites in areas of dense population (i.e. the necessary condition is not present)--locating the sites in sparsely populated areas poses fewer economic and bureaucratic problems. Thus, answer choice (C) seriously weakens the argument because, if it were true, there would no longer necessarily be any misgivings about safety on the part of those responsible for the policy, since there are other reasons for locating the sites in sparsely populated areas, e.g. fewer economic and bureaucratic problems.
Hope that helped! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
zwa39April 5, 2016
If we think about this method of weakening in terms of the 2 ways to weaken an argument, would the weakening of the sufficient and necessary condition (which is the premise in this argument) fall under the second method or the first method? (showing false premise)
JayDee8732August 12, 2017
Why is E incorrect?
MehranAugust 13, 2017
Hi @JayDee8732, thanks for your post. As explained above, this is a weaken question. The conclusion is: There are, "at the very least, some misgivings about safety on the part of those responsible for the policy."
Answer choice (E) seems to strengthen this argument, not weaken it. Like the claims in the passage, answer choice (E) seems to link the geographical location of nuclear waste dumps with the public safety concerns re: nuclear waste.
Hope this helps!
trisharmaAugust 3, 2018
I don't understand why economic and bureaucratic problems are not considered threats to safety. I guess I'm not seeing where the threats are confined to physical threats?
MichelleRodAugust 4, 2018
Thank you for your question. You are right that economic and bureaucratic problems can occasionally pose threats to safety. But it is certainly not the case that such problems are always threats to safety. For example, a bureaucratic problem could simply be onerous paperwork, making rural settings the easier choice. Neither the stimulus nor this answer choice say anything at all to extrapolate a threat to safety from economic or bureaucratic problems.
