PrepTest 126, Section 4, Question 12
Politician: Those economists who claim that consumer price(43 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the politician's(12 more words not shown)
- Aimpugns the character(8 more words not shown)
- Bfails to show(13 more words not shown)
- Cmistakenly infers that(16 more words not shown)
- Duses evidence drawn(9 more words not shown)
- Eattempts to persuade(5 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Five prices aren't the whole economy.
I can understand the politician's reaction. If the things you buy keep getting more expensive, an average increase below 3 percent might sound wrong. But the economists are talking about an average across consumer prices. The politician selects gasoline, insurance, newspapers, propane, and bread. How do we know those five represent the larger picture?
Perhaps many other prices stayed flat or fell. Then these large increases could coexist with a much smaller overall average. We don't need to deny any of the politician's figures to question the conclusion.
What we’re looking for
The flaw question asks us to identify that problem. I'd look for an answer about using a limited, possibly unrepresentative selection to reject a claim about the whole group. The listed increases are real evidence about those items; they just don't settle the broader average.
Working the answers
- A
The remark about the economists not shopping is dismissive, but the politician doesn't rest the argument on their bad character. The offered evidence is a list of price increases. That list may be a poor basis for the conclusion, but we should identify its actual defect rather than treating every rude remark as the argument's method.
- B
You can challenge an expert's claim with relevant evidence without first proving the expert isn't an expert. The problem here is whether the price examples establish that the economists' average is wrong. Their professional status doesn't repair the sample or make disqualifying them a required step.
- C
The politician doesn't merely say the economists haven't proved their claim and therefore it is false. The politician offers affirmative evidence: several prices rose sharply. We need to explain why that evidence is inadequate. An argument from an alleged lack of proof would be a different mistake.
- DCorrect
The five examples may not represent consumer prices overall. If other prices stayed the same or declined, those omitted items could pull the average below the increases the politician lists. The conclusion treats the chosen items as enough to reject the economists' broader measurement without establishing that they give a fair picture.
- E
Mentioning a large rise in the price of bread may upset readers, but the argument's support is numerical. It doesn't ask us to reject the economists because we feel frightened or sorry for someone. The central problem is which prices were selected, not an appeal to emotion.
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