Logical reasoning PrepTest 111 · Section 3 · Question 20

Question prompt

Scientist: Some critics of Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: E

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

Argument or Facts

Argument

Valid or Flawed

Valid

Question Type

Must Be True Questions

Stimulus Summary

Critics: Continued public funding justified → Indicated how public will benefit
Critics right → ~Public support for project
Public support for project

Answer Anticipation

We love this question. It’s a really interesting Must be True question because of how the conditionals and viewpoints overlap! So let’s dig in.
First, we get the view of the Critics, and they present it as a conditional statement (“only if”). That indicator phrase introduces a necessary condition, which is how we got the conditional we diagrammed in the Summary.
From there, it pivots to a conditional rule presented by the Scientist but, interestingly, the sufficient condition (“If”) is based on the Critics being right! If they’re right, then there wouldn’t be public support for the project.
However, there is public support for the project (“would not be the tremendous public support that even its critics acknowledge”). That means we can draw an inference if we take the contrapositive of the Scientist’s conditional rule:
Public support for project → ~Critics right
And since there is public support for the projects, the Critics can’t be right.
However, we have one more step - the view of the Critics is a conditional statement, so what does it mean when a conditional isn’t right? Essentially, it means that the supposedly sufficient condition doesn’t actually guarantee the necessary condition. In other words:
Continued public funding can be justified even if a public benefit can’t be indicated
or
Being able to indicate a public benefit isn’t necessary for continued public funding to be justified

Answer choices

  1. A
    The benefits derived from Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited
    There are two issues here. First, this answer is about benefits and funding, not public benefits or public funding. Second, “irrelevant” is too strong. Something can be unnecessary but still relevant.
  2. B
    Continued public funding for Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    The Critics don’t necessarily believe that public funding isn’t justified - just that a public benefit would need to be indicated in order to justify it. So them being wrong doesn’t lead to this answer.
  3. C
    Public support for the Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    The Scientist’s argument is meant to disprove the view of the Critics. She’s silent as to what actually is an indicator of whether continued public funding is justified.
  4. D
    There is tremendous public Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    The Scientist doesn’t discuss why the public supports the project, just that they do and this means that the Critics are wrong.
  5. E
    That a public benefit Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E matches the stem
    This answer matches our anticipation. The Critics claim that such an indication is necessary for funding to be justified. The Scientist shows that they’re wrong, thus leading to the inference that it isn’t necessary.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 11%
  2. B 7%
  3. C 12%
  4. D 14%
  5. E Credited 55%

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