PrepTest 117, Section 4, Question 11
It is easy to see that the board(46 more words not shown)
The argument's reasoning is most(7 more words not shown)
- Athe argument fails(10 more words not shown)
- Bthe argument fails(15 more words not shown)
- Cthe argument fails(8 more words not shown)
- Dthe argument presumes(12 more words not shown)
- Ethe argument attempts(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Who actually paid the bribes? The staff of one board member. That is a long way from showing that the board as a whole is corrupt.
The accusation is serious, and the recorded bribes give us a reason to investigate. But keep the people straight. We haven't even established that Wagston knew what the staff members were doing. Perhaps Wagston discovered it and fired them. Perhaps Wagston was involved but has since been removed. Those possibilities matter to the recommendation that the current board be replaced.
Even if we assume Wagston is corrupt, what about the other directors? Imagine a board of fifty people with one corrupt member. That wouldn't by itself establish widespread corruption among the other forty-nine. The evidence needs to reach beyond this one member's staff.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw question, I'd look for that expansion: misconduct by the staff becomes an accusation against the whole board. We can accept that the bribery happened while questioning how far the accusation goes.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The corruption could be limited to Wagston's staff. The argument hasn't established Wagston's involvement, much less corruption throughout the board. Showing that a particular group paid bribes doesn't automatically justify replacing a much larger group. A identifies the missing evidence needed to extend the accusation.
- B
Bribing government officials is already a serious form of corruption. We don't need evidence that the staff also bribed other kinds of people. More varieties of wrongdoing by the same staff would still leave our main question unanswered: who else on the board was involved?
- C
The problem isn't that the author failed to define corruption. Bribery that improperly influences government contracts is a reasonable example of it. What needs support is the move from these staff members' conduct to the claim about the board, not a dictionary definition connecting the two words.
- D
The author doesn't say every member of Wagston's staff was corrupt. 'Various persons' can be a subset of the staff. The overreach concerns blaming the board on the basis of staff misconduct, not a stated claim that literally every staff member paid bribes.
- E
Character can be relevant when the question is whether people are corrupt and should be replaced. The author is offering evidence of misconduct, not dismissing someone's unrelated argument because of a personal defect. The evidence is too narrow for the conclusion, but discussing corruption is not itself a distraction from the issue.
More Flaw questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Flaw questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.