PrepTest 152, Section 1, Question 25
Stallworth claims that she supported the proposal to(38 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(12 more words not shown)
- AAccording to the(45 more words not shown)
- BAccording to the(58 more words not shown)
- CAccording to Kapoor,(38 more words not shown)
- DAccording to Harris's(35 more words not shown)
- EAccording to the(32 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if Stallworth is the one whose claim is wrong?
Both people claim to have backed the proposal. Their combined support would have secured approval, but approval didn't happen. That gives us a reason to doubt that both supported it. It doesn't tell us which person's account to trust. The author simply accepts Stallworth's claim and rejects Henning's.
What we’re looking for
For the parallel flaw, I'd look for that selective trust: two accounts cannot both fit the other information, and the author blames one without establishing that the other is reliable. The wording needn't say someone deliberately lied; an account can also be mistaken.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The conditional wording may initially look different, so identify the sources before dismissing it. The TV news says the accident was on Aylmer Street. The newspaper says Morgan saw it from his kitchen window. We are told those accounts cannot both be right: if the location is correct, Morgan couldn't have seen it from that window.
The author accepts the TV location and declares the newspaper mistaken. But what if the TV news has the location wrong? That is the same unexamined alternative as Stallworth's claim being wrong. The TV news occupies Stallworth's accepted role; the newspaper occupies Henning's rejected role. The incompatibility between their accounts gives us a conflict, not a reason to trust one particular source. Neither argument establishes which account is wrong.
- B
This accepts both reports: many residents are behind on taxes, and taxes are unusually high. It then blames the city government for the missed payments. The potential flaw is in that causal assignment of responsibility. It doesn't accept one conflicting source as reliable and use it to declare another source mistaken.
- C
This explicitly makes the conclusion conditional: if Galindo is correct, Kapoor is wrong. It doesn't conclude that Galindo actually is correct and therefore Kapoor actually is wrong. Our author makes that further choice by accepting Stallworth and rejecting Henning. C might also need to connect unsuitable land with imminent danger, but it doesn't repeat the same unsupported selection between accounts.
- D
This relies on one report from Harris's rivals, combines it with a standard for a good mayor, and rejects Harris as a candidate. We might question those rivals' reliability, but there is no conflicting second account that the author singles out as false while accepting the first. A potentially biased source alone doesn't supply the full matching flaw.
- E
Losing manufacturing jobs doesn't necessarily mean the regional unemployment rate rose. Jobs in other sectors could offset those losses, and a rate also depends on the relevant population. E treats a particular sector's job losses as disproving a broader employment figure. It does reject a report, but it doesn't do so by arbitrarily trusting another incompatible source's account as the original does.
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