PrepTest 159, Section 1, Question 25
Artist: I have never won a prize at(51 more words not shown)
The pattern of flawed reasoning(15 more words not shown)
- AResearcher: I have(44 more words not shown)
- BCook: I always(40 more words not shown)
- CProfessor: The same(30 more words not shown)
- DStudent: The student(42 more words not shown)
- ETravel agent: When(38 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Not winning doesn't make a good artist bad. And good artists losing doesn't make the winner bad either.
The artist has submitted paintings, earned recognition, and sold many posters. Six other popular artists have also entered without winning. That gives us evidence of popular artists who didn't win, but what do we know about the artists who did?
Imagine a competition with a huge number of excellent entries and only one prize. Plenty of good artists would have to lose. We aren't told that's the setup here, but it shows why losing needn't establish anything negative about the winner. The same mistake would be obvious in sports: many excellent NFL players don't win the MVP award. It would be absurd to conclude that whoever does win must be bad at football.
What we’re looking for
The parallel should therefore have this structure: the speaker and other apparently good candidates aren't selected, so the speaker concludes that the selected candidates are bad. Keep both halves. A choice about disappointed entrants can still fail to match if it reaches a different conclusion.
Working the answers
- A
This is very close until the last sentence. We have a researcher with commercially successful inventions who doesn't win, plus other scientists with similar experiences. That matches the artist and the six other popular entrants.
But the researcher concludes that the judges use something besides marketability, not that the winners are bad scientists or have bad inventions. A claim about the judging criterion isn't the artist's attack on the quality of whoever wins. Matching the setup isn't enough when the conclusion changes.
- B
This cook wins prizes and reports that the entries are unpopular. The evidence therefore concerns winning entries directly. Our artist instead points to popular entries that lose and leaps to a claim about the winners. The conclusion also concerns public taste rather than artistic quality. The direction of the evidence doesn't match.
- C
The same essays receive different results in different years. The professor uses that change to question whether quality alone determines the result. The artist gives no example of an entry winning one year and losing another, and concludes that winners are bad. Both the evidence and conclusion differ.
- DCorrect
Popular proposals correspond to the popular paintings. The student and other students have offered those proposals, just as the artist and six other artists submitted their work. Having a proposal taken seriously fills the role of winning a prize: it is the favorable treatment the speaker has not received.
Then comes the same unjustified attack on the selected group: only bad proposals get taken seriously. The failure to select these widely supported proposals doesn't establish that the proposals the government does consider are bad. As with the art competition, we would need evidence about the selected proposals themselves.
- E
This agent gives evidence in both directions: creative, dedicated work receives a negative response, while rushed work receives a reward. The artist supplies only examples of supposedly good work failing to win, with no comparable observation of bad work winning. E also concludes something about the airlines' intentions—discouraging good work—not that every rewarded worker is bad. Those structural differences matter more than the presence of rewards.
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