medium · GMAT Verbal
Traditionalists hold the appendix is useless because people who lose it suffer no obvious harm. (1) Yet after severe gut infections, people without an appendix repopulate beneficial bacteria more slowly. (2) The appendix therefore likely serves as a protective reservoir of gut flora, not a vestigial remnant.
The two boldface portions play which of the following roles in the argument?
- The first states the position the argument ultimately rejects; the second is a premise supporting the traditionalist view.
- The first is a finding that counts against the traditionalist position; the second is the conclusion the argument draws.
- The first is the argument's main conclusion; the second is evidence offered to support it.
- The first is a concession the argument makes to the traditionalists; the second qualifies that concession.
- Both are competing conclusions that the argument declines to choose between.
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