PrepTest 105, Section 2, Question 17
Whenever a company loses a major product-liability lawsuit,(49 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(12 more words not shown)
- AWhenever a business(26 more words not shown)
- BWhenever the large(33 more words not shown)
- CWhenever a country(31 more words not shown)
- DWhenever an entering(36 more words not shown)
- EWhenever a company(26 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe the whole stock market fell today. Or maybe Cotoy reported disappointing earnings, or its new product failed. Losing the lawsuit could explain a stock drop, but it isn't the only possible explanation.
The rule gives us one reliable route to a falling stock price: lose a major product liability suit, and the stock falls soon after the announcement. The author sees the stock fall and treats that as proof that this particular route occurred. The fact that Cotoy is involved in a major lawsuit makes the story plausible. It doesn't make it certain.
What we’re looking for
For a parallel flaw, we want that same move: one event guarantees a result; the result happens; therefore, that event must have happened. Keep the direction straight. We're looking for someone who mistakes a possible explanation for the only explanation.
Working the answers
- A
Shopwell wants to retain all its customers, so the author predicts that its employees will never be discourteous. Wanting an outcome doesn't ensure that everyone will act in the way needed to achieve it. That's a problem, but it's a different problem.
To copy Cotoy's mistake, this would need to say that customers shopped elsewhere and therefore the employees must have been discourteous. Instead, it moves from the business's goal to a prediction about employee behavior.
- B
This starts with the large airlines' fare decrease and predicts a financial consequence for the smaller airlines. It travels from the stated cause toward the stated result. Cotoy travels the other way: the result occurred, so the supposed cause must have occurred. We might question whether being adversely affected always means being seriously threatened, or what an announcement alone establishes. Neither issue gives us the particular mistake we're matching.
- C
This recommends leadership as a way to gain respect, based on the claim that lacking leadership causes respect to decline. Preventing a decline and producing a gain aren't automatically the same thing. But the author doesn't observe a decline and infer that the country must lack leadership. The required result-to-cause move is missing.
- DCorrect
Winning the fellowship plays the role of losing the lawsuit. Receiving $10,000 plays the role of the stock price falling. Each argument gives a rule connecting its first event to its second, observes the second, and then declares that the first must have happened.
Eula could have received the money through another scholarship or grant. Being enrolled at Cashman makes the fellowship a possible explanation, just as Cotoy's involvement in litigation makes a judgment a possible explanation. Neither fact excludes the alternatives.
- E
Here the expected result is absent: sales did not increase. If effective advertising always increases sales, then the absence of an increase rules out effective advertising. That's consistent with the rule, and “likely” is no stronger than what the rule would support.
Cotoy's author instead observes the result and claims to know its cause. A missing result can rule out something that guarantees it; a present result doesn't identify which of several possible causes produced it.
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