Why is E wrong?

@msaber, Happy to help. The stimulus makes a strong claim that decreasing ice cream sales must have been the result of people switching over to eating cheddar cheese instead of ice cream. The problem with this conclusion is that it's mistaking correlation for causation (it's a causal flaw). The argument is basically saying that just because these two things happened simultaneously (decreasing ice cream sales and increasing cheddar cheese sales), one of them must be driving the other. We're looking for the answer choice that can bring to attention the fact that there could be a ton of other reason that ice cream sales are dropping a lot. You asked about (E). (E) says, "presumes, without providing justification, that people who eat cheddar cheese never eat ice cream" We know that the author believes that people are replacing ice cream in their diets with cheddar cheese. While this answer appears good at first, the word "never" is far too strong and is not supported by the information given to us in the stimulus. Just because there may be some people that are replacing ice cream with cheddar cheese does not imply that people who are eating cheddar cheese are never eating ice cream. We can get rid of (E). (B) says, "fails to consider alternative explanations of the decline in sales of ice cream" We know that the passage's author only takes into consideration one potential explanation and ultimately makes the claim that this particular explanation is the real reason for the decrease in ice cream sales. (B) paraphrases this well, and it matches our anticipation that was mentioned in our analysis of the stimulus. There are a multitude of potential reasons for why ice cream sales may be fallen so much. Rising sales of cheddar cheese is simply one of a whole bunch of possibilities, and this is the flaw of the argument. (B) is the correct answer. Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any more questions!

Perfect explanation thank you!

@msaber, happy to help!