PrepTest 102, Section 3, Question 6
Legislator: Your agency is responsible for regulating an(80 more words not shown)
The regulator responds to the(3 more words not shown)
- Ashifting the blame(6 more words not shown)
- Bproviding information that(7 more words not shown)
- Cclaiming that compliance(10 more words not shown)
- Drephrasing the legislator's(8 more words not shown)
- Eshowing that the(4 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe they couldn't find enough qualified people willing to take the job.
Hiring fewer than 500 investigators doesn't tell us why the agency fell short. Perhaps the salaries were too low. Imagine a budget based on paying 500 people $80,000 each when qualified applicants would require $100,000. The same money would cover only 400 people. Or perhaps too few qualified people applied at the offered rate. Either possibility gives us something to investigate before accusing the agency of a cover-up.
The legislator makes exactly that accusation: the agency deliberately limited hiring to keep the full scandal from coming out. That is a claim about motive, not just a report of the staffing numbers. The numbers alone haven't established it. And why assume the 400 investigators couldn't uncover damaging information too?
The regulator answers with the salary problem. The legislature froze starting pay so low that the agency could not attract enough qualified applicants, even though it tried to hire 500. That explains the shortfall without accepting the alleged plan to hide information.
What we’re looking for
We're asked how the regulator responds. My prediction is an alternative explanation that challenges the accusation. Keep the subject straight: the reply explains the shortage of investigators, not the original industry scandals.
Working the answers
- A
The regulator does point to a legislative decision, but as the cause of the hiring problem. A says the reply blames the legislature for the scandals themselves. Those are different events. Nothing in the reply claims that the legislature caused the industry's wrongdoing.
- BCorrect
The low starting salaries are information the legislator's accusation leaves out. They give a reason the agency could fall short even while trying to hire the requested number. That challenges the conclusion that the shortfall was deliberate concealment. B's description is broader than “offers an alternative explanation,” but it accurately describes what that explanation does.
- C
This would be a reply saying, “Even 500 investigators wouldn't have been enough to investigate properly.” The regulator doesn't question whether 500 would have been a sufficient response. The reply explains why the agency couldn't attract that many qualified people.
- D
The regulator isn't merely making the same accusation sound better. Deliberately limiting an investigation and unsuccessfully trying to fill positions are different accounts of what happened. The reply changes the proposed explanation, not just the language used to describe the legislator's conclusion.
- E
The legislator's claims aren't shown to contradict one another. An agency could receive funding, hire too few investigators, and do so deliberately; those claims can coexist. The regulator instead offers a reason to doubt that this was deliberate. Disputing a conclusion with additional information isn't the same as exposing an internal contradiction.
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