Q3 - Columnist: Although it is our civic duty to

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Sufficient Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: We should not reroute power lines away from populous areas.
Evidence: Even though we have a civic duty to protect the population against health hazards, our resources should be devoted to protecting the population only from well-substantiated threats to public health.

Answer Anticipation:
If the author thinks, "we should only protect against well-substantiated threats, thus we should not bother re-routing these power lines away from the population", then she must be assuming that "having high-tension power lines near heavily populated areas is not a well-substantiated threat to public health".

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) The fact that loss of power would be a public health threat doesn't tell us whether having power lines near populated areas is a substantiated threat.

(B) We don't care about economic realities, just whether power lines near people is a substantiated threat.

(C) Too weak and sounds like the opposite of what we want. We need to know that power lines are NOT a well-substantiated threat, and this is sounding more like "some threats are substantiated".

(D) YUP, this gets us our missing idea of "having high-tension power lines near people is not a well-substantiated threat"

(E) This could be a strengthener, but it doesn't lock in the conclusion, because it doesn't discuss whether power lines near people is a well-substantiated threat.

Takeaway/Pattern: Sufficient Assumption can / should normally be solved upfront before you look at the answer choices. Since this is an earlier question (and thus potentially easier), all the more reason to expect that we can figure out what's missing and then actively look for it in the answers. On an older test, they would have used verbatim wording in the correct answer. To add a little difficulty here, instead of just saying "power lines are NOT a well-substantiated threat", they spelled out that same meaning using different words.

#officialexplanation