PrepTest 128, Section 3, Question 12
Clothes dryers manufactured by Archway Appliances, Inc.(43 more words not shown)
The argument is most vulnerable(13 more words not shown)
- Athere is not(14 more words not shown)
- Bthere are aspects(17 more words not shown)
- CArchway's dryers consistently(7 more words not shown)
- Da shoddily constructed(7 more words not shown)
- EArchway's other product(10 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Poor quality could mean several things in a dryer. Perhaps it breaks quickly or fails to dry clothes. Here the evidence is more specific: crucial bolts are missing, and some sections are assembled in the wrong order. Those defects create shock and fire hazards.
That's a serious problem, but why blame the quality of the components? A missing bolt isn't necessarily a low-quality bolt. Someone may have failed to install a perfectly good one. Likewise, excellent parts can be put together in the wrong order.
The argument moves from a badly constructed finished product to defective materials. What if the materials are fine and the assembly is the problem? Imagine workers receiving high-quality parts but skipping crucial steps as they build the dryers. We could get exactly the hazards described without using substandard components.
What we’re looking for
The flaw question asks what possibility the argument overlooks. That's my prediction: bad construction can coexist with good parts.
Working the answers
- A
A hazard doesn't have to cause an accident before it counts as a hazard. Perhaps the dryer is new and hasn't yet been sold, or owners have simply avoided an accident so far. More importantly, an absence of known injuries doesn't tell us whether the components or the assembly caused the defects.
- B
Other aspects of construction could matter more to overall quality while the problems mentioned still exist. This doesn't address the crucial inference from those problems to substandard components. We need to distinguish the quality of the parts from the way the parts are assembled.
- C
Dryers can dry clothes effectively and have loyal customers while still containing a dangerous assembly defect. Customers may not even know about it. C therefore doesn't establish that the identified problems are absent or, more directly, that those problems have been incorrectly attributed to the components.
- DCorrect
High-quality parts can be assembled badly. That possibility allows us to accept the missing bolts, incorrect assembly, and resulting hazards while rejecting the claim that Archway must use substandard parts. The conclusion identifies a source of poor quality that the evidence hasn't established.
- E
Archway could assemble its washing machines or dishwashers carefully while making mistakes in its dryer line. Other products don't establish what materials the dryers contain or why their construction is defective.
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