Here we have a strengthen with necessary premise question. Remember that a premise is necessary for a conclusion if the falsity of the premise guarantees or brings about the falsity of the conclusion. First we check to see if the answer choice strengthens the passage, and then, if it does strengthen, we negate the answer choice to see if its negation makes the argument fall apart. If the answer choice does both those things then it is our correct answer.
The conclusion of the argument is: the treatment would be safe.
Why? The proposed treatment is to inject female deer with 10 milligrams of the hormone. Critics are saying that the proposal could pose a health risk to people who eat the meat of the treated deer by ingesting unsafe quantities of the hormone. We are told that this is not a valid concern since humans can ingest up to 10 milligrams of the hormone every day without any adverse effects, and no one would ever eat an entire deer in a day.
Answer choice (D) states: "The hormone in question does not occur naturally in the female deer that would be injected."
Does this strengthen the argument? Yes. This means that the deer starts with 0 milligrams of this hormone and, after the treatment, ends up with 10 milligrams of the hormone, which--as the biologist responds--would not be harmful to anyone eating the deer because humans can ingest up to 10 milligrams of the hormone a day--and, furthermore, no one would ever eat one entire deer a day. Thus, this supports the conclusion that the treatment is safe.
Does the negation of this answer choice make the argument fall apart? Yes. Negation: The hormone in question does occur naturally in the female deer that would be injected. If deer already have a certain amount of this hormone, then adding more of this hormone would make it more likely that a human who eats the meat of a treated deer could possibly ingest more than 10 milligrams of the hormone, i.e. reaching levels that would no longer be safe. Thus, it no longer necessarily follows that the treatment would be safe to conduct.
Therefore, answer choice (D) is our answer.
Hope that clears things up. Please let us know if you have any other questions.
sharpen7September 12, 2017
Why not E?
MehranSeptember 14, 2017
Hi @sharpen7, thanks for your post. As already noted, this is a strengthen with necessary premise question, which means that the correct answer, when negated, would make the argument in the stimulus fall apart.
The argument in the stimulus is explained in our previous instructor post, above.
Answer choice (E) can be eliminated because the conclusion in the stimulus has nothing to do with the number of people who eat deer. Rather, it's about whether someone who *does* eat deer meat faces any health risks from ingesting unsafe quantities of the hormone in question. Put differently, even if only one person in the world eats deer, that does not change (strengthen or weaken) the biologist's response to the critics.
Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any additional questions.
ElaFebruary 26, 2020
I still do not understand. So if the hormone did occur naturally than he would not need to inject the deer?
June 7, 2021
@Elizabet, I agree with you in that answer choice D did not make sense to me because I didn't see why, if the deer already had the hormone, it was still being injected. Also, since it's "breeding season" wouldn't that mean that their bodies naturally begin producing hormones to breed?
