Q10 - Creating a database of all the plant

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Must Be False (~ish)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Creating a plant wikipedia is hard for two reasons:
1) The same plant has been named multiple things
2) DNA shows that plants science thought were the same species, aren't

Answer Anticipation:
Since the language is so wishy-washy, I'm expecting the correct answer to be extreme so that a single counterexample would disprove it. As to specifics, I'm not sure what exactly to look for.

Correct answer:
D

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Degree/timeline. The stimulus never states the current state of the database. It could be nearing completion despite the difficulties.

(B) If anything, supported. It doesn't seem as if they'd undertake the difficulties if it wasn't useful. While this answer is technically out of scope (maybe the whole purpose of botany is just to create this database), if I'm leaning towards it being supported, I'll cut it and move on.

(C) Out of scope. The argument never talks about other fields, so this may or may not be true.

(D) This answer is extreme, so I like it for a Must Be False question - if there is a single technique, then this answer is wrong. And we know there must be, since plants that were thought to be distinct because of their names were found to be the same. They've also been using DNA to distinguish between species.

(E) If anything, supported, though again out of scope. Since the plants have been studied under different names, there's a chance that the information is split between entries.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Must Be False questions twist our brains a bit because we're so used to finding inferences, not contradictions. Take your time to think through what the answer choice must do (contradict a given statement), and remember that anything out of scope could be true.

#officialexplanation

[seychelles1718]

I spent a lot of time with this question and the explanation above but I still don't understand why D is contradicted by the stimulus...
Where does the stimulus talk about botanists determining whether distinct species have been given distinct names?
Could someone please explain further?

Thank you so much!

[ohthatpatrick]

(D) isn't straight-up contradicted, but it's got the most negative support.

We're creating a database of all plant species. It's been a tough task because for 100s of years, we've been collecting/naming plants that were already named.

The logic of those two claims is that in our CURRENT effort to compile a database, we're noticing that some entries are "duplicate" entries.

In order for us to notice that we have a duplicate entry ("Oh, snap ... don't add this one to the database -- we already have a name for this one"), we presumably need some way of seeing whether we're dealing with distinct plant species.

Then it tells us that we've used DNA analysis to say
"Oh snap ... we've long thought that all these varieties of plants belong to the same species, but they actually belong to different species."

The first 2 sentences sound like we've figured out
"sometimes we've given multiple names to the same species"
and the 3rd sentence sounds like
"sometimes we've given only one name to refer to multiple species."

Both of these judgments would require a technique for determining whether each distinct species is getting its own distinct name.