Logical reasoning PrepTest 151 · Section 4 · Question 19

Incorrect. The stimulus notes that government officials are "too often" not justified in keeping secrets, but that falls short of "most cases"—it's possible that it being unjustified 40% of the time is too often.

Incorrect. This answer is an illegal negation of one of the statements in the premise. While it is established that having an insubstantial reason to keep a secret leads to an abuse of power, that doesn't mean having a substantial reason doesn't lead to an abuse of power.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Must Be True

Stimulus Summary:
Facilitate abuse of power AND not Compelling reason → not Government should do it
This rule applies to keeping secrets.
Keeping secrets: Sometimes it's justified. Sometimes it's not and leads to an abuse of power.
Government conceals they're keeping secrets → Increase chances there's an abuse of power

Answer Anticipation:
There are a lot of little details here along with a few conditionals. Focusing on the conditionals, we can see that there's a bit of overlap between them—concealing secrets exist facilitates ("opens up even greater") abuse of power, so that shouldn't be done without a compelling reason. While we should stay flexible and look for answers that align with the details and conditionals, that combination of the conditionals is likely to feature in the correct answer.

Answer Explanation:
Tricky! The stimulus states that concealing the existence of a secret "opens up even greater" chances of abuse of power. So concealing the existence of a secret—according to the first conditional—shouldn't be done "except in cases" where there's a compelling reason. So putting those together, concealing a secret exists shouldn't be done unless there's a compelling reason to do so, as this answer states.

Key Takeaway:
Look for overlapping concepts in conditional statements in Must Be True questions! Especially ones that ask for something that can be "properly inferred" instead of "most strongly supported." Conditional statements allow fully valid conclusions to be drawn much more easily than non-conditional statements, so when they're featured in Must Be True questions, they tend to directly relate to the correct answer.

Incorrect. The government concealing information is established as facilitating/enabling abuses of power, but that's not the same as the people concealing information abusing power themselves. That term shift invalidates this answer.

Incorrect. The argument carves out an exception to keeping a secret that could facilitate an abuse of power—there must be a compelling reason to do so. Thus it establishes that there are some practices that can lead to an abuse of power that are acceptable, as long as the reason for doing so is compelling enough.