Logical reasoning PrepTest 122 · Section 2 · Question 25

Incorrect. The conclusion limits itself to "at this time," so what might happen in the future is out of scope.

Incorrect. Conflicts of interest aren't raised in the stimulus, so they're out of scope.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Sufficient Premise

Stimulus Summary:
Association rule - Public disclosure of officer's investments ←→ Officer authorized to disburse funds OR Officer sits on board of petrochemical company
Cecile - Officer. not Authorized to disburse funds. not Sits on board of petrochemical company.
Conclusion - Cecile - not Public disclosure of officer's investments

Answer Anticipation:
This argument starts by establishing a rather complicated rule that Cecile's association has put in place, so let's work through how we ended up with the diagram we have in our Summary.

The conditional establishes that the association "requires" (introducing a necessary condition) disclosure in two cases "only" (introducing another necessary condition). Since both terms in this conditional are necessary for each other, the statement is a biconditional. As to the OR term, when the stimulus uses "and" as a connector, think about the meaning of the statement. It says that there are two cases where something applies—so each of those cases must individually have the rule apply. The "and" is part of a list, but the logic says that it's an OR. Don't get so wrapped up in translating to a conditional statement you lose the meaning!

With that said, we can see that Cecile is an officer at the company, so the rule applies to her. However, she doesn't fall into either of the cases where the rule requires public disclosure. And since these are the only two cases where the rule applies, it must be the case that this rule doesn't require her to disclose her investments. Isn't that the conclusion?

It is not. The conclusion is that Cecile doesn't have to publicly disclose her investments, but the premises involve only the association's rule on disclosure. There's no indication that a different organization doesn't also have a rule that applies to Cecile and requires disclosure. For example, maybe the government requires public disclosure of investments for officers of any association. In that case, the association's rules wouldn't require Cecile to disclose, but another rule would.Let's find an answer stating that there are no other rules that apply to Cecile that could require her disclosure.

Answer Explanation:
This answer establishes that the rule in the stimulus is the only rule that might require Cecile's disclosure. If that's the case, since this rule doesn't require her disclosure, we can conclude that she doesn't need to disclose. This answer is therefore correct.

Key Takeaway:
This is a question where it's very easy to miss what the flaw is, since following the conditional does lead to the conclusion. If you end up going into the answers without noticing that flaw, hoping to find the answer when you get there, have a plan of attack! Be sure to check each answer choice, and after reading an answer, identify what would need to be true in the stimulus for that answer to be correct. For instance, for answer choice (A), it would need to be the case that the conclusion talked about Cecile not just now but in the future. When heading back to the stimulus to check the conclusion, we would now have something specific to look for, and we'd know that answer was wrong when we saw that the answer was limited to the present.

Incorrect. It's unclear if someone who sits on the board of a company owned by a petrochemical company counts for the rule. However, it either does, in which case the conclusion is wrong, or it doesn't, in which case nothing changes for our analysis of the argument. In either case, this answer is wrong.

Incorrect. Investing in a petrochemical company isn't established as being a case requiring disclosure, so this answer is out of scope.