PrepTest 132, Section 2, Question 21
Most large nurseries sell raspberry plants primarily to(32 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AIf Johnson is(27 more words not shown)
- BJohnson is probably(26 more words not shown)
- CIf Johnson is(14 more words not shown)
- DWally's Plants is(17 more words not shown)
- EIf Wally's Plants(24 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What does an infected shipment tell us about Wally's? Less than it might seem.
Most large nurseries follow the stated practices, not all of them. A large nursery could be an exception. And selling primarily to commercial growers doesn't mean selling exclusively to them. So we don't know whether Wally's is large, whether Johnson is a commercial grower, or exactly what the nursery promised about this shipment. We know the plants carried a virus.
What we’re looking for
That leaves us with little to conclude outright. The question asks what is most strongly supported, and the choices add “if” conditions. We'll need to consider those one at a time: if we accept the proposed condition, does the rest of the answer follow from what we were told? We shouldn't fill the gaps with guesses about the nursery or its customer.
Working the answers
- A
This places Wally's outside the large-nursery group. We weren't told the usual practices of other nurseries. Johnson's being a commercial grower doesn't fill that gap; we can't infer the seller's guarantee just from the customer's occupation.
- B
A shipment failing to match its guarantee doesn't tell us whether Johnson is a commercial grower. A commercial customer could receive diseased plants despite a promise, just as another customer could. The failure concerns the shipment, not the kind of buyer.
- C
Even large nurseries primarily serving commercial growers can have some noncommercial customers. Johnson could be one of those customers. More broadly, we don't know enough about the relative numbers or sales of large and small nurseries to infer Wally's size from Johnson's status.
- D
“Well-run” introduces a judgment the passage never establishes. Selling mainly to commercial growers fits a practice of most large nurseries; it doesn't show that Wally's probably isn't large and well-run. We also can't settle the nursery's overall management from this shipment alone.
- ECorrect
If Wally's is large, the practice of most large nurseries gives us reason to expect that its plants came with a disease-free guarantee. But these plants carried a virus. They therefore probably failed to match that guarantee.
The “probably” matters: Wally's could be one of the exceptions among large nurseries. And the “if” matters: we aren't establishing that Wally's actually is large. E makes the supported, qualified inference under that condition.
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