PrepTest 137, Section 4, Question 2
Spokesperson: Contrary to what some have claimed, our(28 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AThe amount of(24 more words not shown)
- BThose who claim(26 more words not shown)
- CThe campaign has(21 more words not shown)
- DThe spokesperson's group(15 more words not shown)
- EThe amount of(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The streets are cleaner. Did the campaign clean them?
Let's accept the decrease in trash. That's good news, but the spokesperson wants the campaign to get the credit. What if private residents decided to organize their own cleanup? The streets could improve while the campaign contributed little or nothing.
What we’re looking for
That is the missing connection I'd look for in this necessary-assumption question. The decrease has to give us a reason to think the campaign worked, rather than merely describing something that happened while the campaign was running. We don't need to establish that the campaign was the only thing helping, but we do need to address the possibility that the improvement would have happened anyway.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
What if the streets were already getting cleaner at the same rate, or even faster, before the campaign? Then the spokesperson's before-and-after comparison wouldn't establish a rousing success. The campaign could simply have arrived during an improvement already underway.
A rules out that problem with the evidence. It doesn't prove that the campaign caused the cleanup or eliminate every other possible cause. It supplies a required assumption behind using this decline as evidence that the campaign succeeded.
- B
The critics could know exactly how much trash disappeared and still question whether the campaign deserves credit. Their awareness doesn't determine whether the campaign worked. The spokesperson doesn't need to assume that disagreement comes from ignorance of the numbers.
- C
Successful doesn't mean the most successful ever. An earlier campaign might have removed even more trash, while this one still accomplished a great deal. The argument needs a connection between this campaign and the improvement, not a first-place ranking among all campaigns.
- D
Why would special funding prevent the campaign from working? Extra money could help pay for an effective cleanup. The source of the funding doesn't settle whether the campaign caused the decrease in trash, and the argument doesn't require the absence of that funding.
- E
The improvement needn't occur steadily. Imagine that the campaign removed a large amount of trash immediately and then kept the streets at that cleaner level. That could be a successful campaign even though the amount of trash didn't decline continuously throughout it. The overall improvement matters; an uninterrupted downward trend isn't required.
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