Logical reasoning PrepTest 122 · Section 4 · Question 5

Incorrect. There's no comparison of the love vets feel for biology and animals. And the statements leave open the possibility that some vets love biology but not animals, so this answer absolutely could be true.

Incorrect. While the two most statements allow an inference only that some vets love both biology and animals, that doesn't preclude the possibility that this is true of most vets, so this answer could be true.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Cannot Be True

Stimulus Summary:
Vets -most-> Serious interest in biological sciences
Vets at university research centers -most-> Serious interest in biological sciences
Vets -most-> Chose job because they love animals
Serious interest in biological sciences AND not Love animals → not Prominent vet

Answer Anticipation:
This Cannot Be True question features conditional and quantified statements, so let's start by working through how we diagrammed them, and then move on to anticipating an answer based on that.

The first two statements are most statements, using that word to discuss vets, so they're relatively straightforward diagrams. The one note we want to make is about the vets at university research centers being broken out into their own statement. Since the "main" statement is about vets generally, it's possible that a specific subset of vets doesn't have a particular interest in the biological sciences. As a parallel example, even if most Americans don't live in Hawaii, there's a subset of Americans where that isn't true (mainly, those who do live in Hawaii). As such, it is noteworthy that the stimulus guarantees that this one specific subset of vets does share the characteristic of the group as a whole—that's added information, not repeated information. And saying that the "[m]ost vet[s]" statement applies "especially" to this group lets us determine that it is a most statement, as well.

For the conditional statement at the end, "but" serves the same function as "and," though highlighting that the two conditions connected there are a bit more at odds than you might expect.

With the statements outlined, we should anticipate specific answers. While the most statements could lead to a correct answer, it's much more likely that the conditional will. That's because an answer that cannot be true based on a most statement would have to just directly state the opposite—which is usually too easy to spot for them to offer it as an answer. However, conditional statements lead to specific answers that cannot be true—ones that establish the sufficient condition but then say the necessary condition isn't present. If we rewrite that statement and its contrapositive, we can look for answers that contradict either one:
Serious interest in biology AND not Love animals → not Prominent
Prominent → not Serious interest in biology OR Love animals

Answer Explanation:
This answer discusses prominent vets, which triggers the contrapositive of the conditional (it doesn't matter what else is true of these vets, and the sufficient condition includes all prominent vets). In triggering that contrapositive, it must be true that these vets either aren't seriously interested in biology or they don't particularly love animals. This answer says that this group of vets is intensely devoted to biology (so it misses necessary condition one) and doesn't particularly love animals (so it misses necessary condition two). In raising a sufficient condition but showing neither necessary condition is present, this answer presents a situation that cannot be true.

Key Takeaway:
When a Cannot Be True question has a mix of weaker and stronger statements, it's very likely that the weaker statements will be irrelevant to the correct answer, and the stronger statement will be the one contradicted by that answer.

Incorrect. As we noted in the stimulus, a subset of a group most of whom have a certain quality doesn't necessarily also mostly have that quality. Vets at university research centers could almost all be in the group of vets who didn't go into the profession because they love animals, and so this answer could be true.

Incorrect. Since being a non-prominent vet isn't a sufficient condition for anything, almost anything could be true about that group. The "importance" of different qualities also isn't discussed. When answers are out of scope, they can be true for all we know, so we can eliminate this answer.