Logical reasoning PrepTest 101 · Section 2 · Question 25

Question prompt

The publisher of a Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: A

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Argument or Facts

Argument

Valid or Flawed

Flawed

Question Type

Principle Questions / Strengthen Questions

Stimulus Summary

Judgment - The publisher’s false claim wasn’t unethical in this case
Rationale - “[E]veryone knows” that the claim couldn’t be true

Answer Anticipation

Principle (Strengthen) questions generally present a judgment in the conclusion, attempting to justify it based on the details in the premises. As such, a great strategy when there are a lot of details is to start with that judgment, and then look out for details that seem to rationalize it.
Here, the conclusion is that, in this case, the publisher didn’t do something unethical in making a false claim. With that in mind, we should look through the premises to see what might justify making such a false claim.
And the only thing that suggests a reason to believe making a false claim wasn’t wrong here is that “everyone knows” that the claim couldn’t be true.
Since that’s the only detail presented that could justify such a judgment, we should look for an answer that presents a principle connecting those ideas:
If everyone knows that a claim is false, then it’s not unethical to make that claim

Answer choices

  1. A
    Knowingly making a false Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A matches the stem
    This answer is pretty close to our anticipation, so we should dig in. The “only if” establishes the second half of this statement as a necessary condition: False claim unethical → Reasonable to accept claim. Taking the contrapositive, we get: ~Reasonable to accept claim → ~False claim unethical. That does line up with our conclusion that the publisher didn’t act unethically when making this false claim. And the premise established that everyone knows the claim to be false - and thus it’s not reasonable to accept the claim. This answer, therefore, justifies the conclusion, so this is the correct answer.

  2. B
    Knowingly making a false Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    This answer provides a sufficient condition for reaching the conclusion that knowingly making a false claim is unethical. Since the conclusion of the argument is that someone didn’t act unethically in making a false claim, this answer choice can be eliminated.

  3. C
    Knowingly making a false Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    There’s no discussion of anyone suffering a hardship in the stimulus (failing to have exceptional success isn’t a hardship), so this answer is out of scope.

  4. D
    Knowingly making a false Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    There’s no discussion in the stimulus of whether people might act as if the claim made by the publishers were true. Even if everyone knows that the book can’t deliver on its claims, they may still act as if it were true - people act on false claims all the time!

  5. E
    Knowingly making a false Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    Similar to (B), this answer provides situations where it is unethical to knowingly make a false claim, and the conclusion is about a situation where it wasn’t unethical to do so.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A Credited 62%
  2. B 7%
  3. C 9%
  4. D 15%
  5. E 6%

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