by noah Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:40 pm
Super - let's get into this weaken question. Since it's in the Assumption Family, let's get to the core: The conclusion is that we can dismiss the idea that sugar makes kids hyper. Why? Because a study showed that there's no difference in how sugar and splenda (sugar substitutes) affect kids.
[Note how I've boiled it down and taken some liberties - and while that can be dangerous if you forget you've done than and get tripped up by "erasing" modifiers, it can be very helpful in actually absorbing an argument.]
So, our core is:
study shows no difference betw. sugar and splenda affect on kids --> sugar doesn't make kids hyper
Put on your debaters cap. What would be your response?
Well, what if both sugar and splenda makes kids hyper? Then the study might actually support the idea that sugar makes kids hyper!
(C) brings up this possibility. It's a bit confusing, since it only refers to "some" sugar substitutes, but it opens the door to this large gap in the argument. Even if it were just a couple of sugar substitutes, this possibility seriously calls into question the validity (air-tightness) of the argument.
(A) is irrelevant - we're not interested in which sugars were widely suspected of making kids hyper. The question is whether the study can allow us to dismiss the theory.
(B) is perhaps tempting, but if anything this would strengthen the argument. Sugar doesn't make kids hyper - it calms them down! However, because it only does this for some kids, (B) doesn't have any effect, because "some" can mean 2 out of the entire world's population of kids (and thus not indicate a trend whatsoever).
(D) provides details of how the study was conducted. Sometimes this sort of info is helpful in supporting or weakening an argument that includes a study, but here this simply tells us that the study involved "some" observations that might make kids hyper. Again, "some" means "one or more," so this answer doesn't tell us much about what was generally happening. Plus, even if the kids were in a situation that makes them hyper, who is to say that the study could not determine if kids who had sugar were even more hyper? In other words, if the entire study were done in this manner, would it make it impossible to determine the effect of these sugars and sugar substitutes? Not necessarily - and it wasn't the entire study that was done in this way.
(E) may be tempting - perhaps, as the poster above suggests, if kids can tell the difference they'll act differently. However, you need to add in quite an assumption here (that the kids would modify their behavior based on this knowledge). There are some other problems with this: the kids "believe" they can tell, but can they? And again, it's "some" kids, so maybe that's 2.
It's interesting how "some" ends up being a problem for most of the wrong answers, but not for the correct one. The question is whether "some" representing a small number would still call into question the argument. With (C), it does.
Does that clear it up?