This is a strengthening question, as the stem states: Which one of the following principles, if established, most strongly supports the argument?
This is a nice and short stimulus. Our author concludes purely on the basis that cigarette smoking has been found to be a health hazard, all smoking advertisements should be banned. We want a principle that justifies this conclusion about what ought to happen. On to the answers:
Answer Choice (A) This is bait answer, and what makes this question particularly difficult. What we have to infer is that there are other ways of promoting smoking besides showing people smoking.
Answer Choice (B) Again, we want a reason to ban all advertisements that promote smoking; not just the ones that are misleading.
Answer Choice (C) Ok, but even if they did our author still believes they should be banned.
Answer Choice (D) We’ve been told nothing about government standards.
Correct Answer Choice (E) Bingo! What we need to catch on to is the contrapositive of this answer; if a product is unhealthy (i.e a health hazard) then it shouldn’t be promoted by advertisements. It would follow from this principle and the fact cigarette smoking has been shown to be unhealthy that cigarettes should not be promoted, which would support the government banning such promotions.
This is a flawed question, and we know this because of the question stem: Which one of the following, if true, indicates the most serious flaw in the method used by the investigators?
The stimulus is recapping a TV program about astrology, where they found 20 people who were Geminis and would be willing to go on TV for an interview and take a personality test. The test confirmed that these people were more extroverted and social than the average person. Therefore, the argument concludes that the investigation supports the view that birth signs affect personality. The argument is assuming that all Gemini is outgoing and social, but since they only pick Gemini who would be willing to go on TV, it’s sort of a pre-selected group. After all, if someone was more introverted they’d be less willing to agree to be interviewed, regardless of their sign. There is a correlative-causal flaw here, and the argument makes an invalid and hasty conclusion based on a group they selected that would confirm their conclusion. The way they selected their data points gave them a false positive.
Answer Choice (A) is not the flaw; who gave and scored the test has nothing to do with the way this argument is flawed.
Answer Choice (B) also does not indicate the flaw; in fact, this could in some ways strengthen the argument.
Answer Choice (C) describes what’s happening in the stimulus, but it doesn’t point out what's wrong with the argument.
Answer Choice (D) also does not point out a flaw in the argument: an abundance or dearth of Gemini does nothing to point out the flaw in our answer.
Correct Answer Choice (E) points out the flaw perfectly. What if the study just completely ignores the Gemini because they don’t want to participate in the first place?
This is a weakening question, as our stem asks: Which one of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument?
Our stimulus begins the claim that learning how to build a nest is important for the breeding success for birds. As an example of this claim’s truth, we’re told about a study where blackbirds were less successful breeding while nesting than older birds or even themselves are a year later. So there is a correlation between nest building and high breeding success, got it. To further strengthen the conclusion, the argument eliminates the alternate explanation that it is just about how large and strong the birds are, because they are fully grown once they leave their parents nest. The stimulus ends by reaffirming its conclusion that nesting benefits breeding success. Since this is a weakening question, we want to find an answer that undermines this hypothesis that the higher breeding rates are because of the nesting. Let’s see our options:
Answer Choice (A) Who cares? They could build really nice nests and it still be true that nesting experience benefits breeding success.
Correct Answer Choice (B) This gives an alternate explanation for the increase in breeding success; it’s not their nesting experience, but their experience of attempting to breed, which leads to an increased success rate over successive years.
Answer Choice (C) This would support the conclusion that nesting experience contributes to breeding success.
Answer Choice (D) So just as the argument stated, it’s not because of size and strength; this does not weaken the argument at all.
Answer Choice (E) Ok but we are interested in the increase after they started to nest; who cares about the birds that didn’t make it (no offense to any avian 7Sagers)?
This is a weakening question: Which one of the following, if true, would weaken the argument?
Here we have a stimulus which begins with the conclusion; our author declares that there is no point in requiring scientists’ work be officially confirmed before being published. This is because there is already an unofficial confirmation system; the ability of other scientists to replicate results. Poor scientific work will be revealed when other scientists fail to replicate it, and therefore will cause no harm. So we don’t need to vet what gets published because scientists will naturally figure out whether a publication is flawed and harmful. Interesting! Our job is to weaken this conclusion: we want ACs which suggest that the official confirmation is important and not redundant! Let’s see what we get:
Correct Answer Choice (A) Bingo! If replication can take years to occur, then that is years a flawed study could be out there causing harm.
Answer Choice (B) This strengthens the conclusion, by providing another vetting system which could catch issues regardless of official confirmation.
Answer Choice (C) This also supports that replication will be able to find errors if unofficially confirmed work is published.
Answer Choice (D) This does nothing to undermine the author’s conclusion.
Answer Choice (E) Cool! But what does this have to do with whether official confirmation is important!
We should recognize this as a resolve, reconcile, explain question, since it asks: Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain how the deer mouse might have found its way back to its nest?
Our first sentence informs us that deer mice don’t stray far from their nests, and further specifies that when they are moved more than half a kilometer from the nest, they generally never find their way back. Interesting! Since we read the question stem first, we know the discrepancy we are tasked with explaining is that despite the truth of this general statement about the difficulty of deer mice finding their way home, one deer mouse was able to. And that’s exactly what the next sentence introduces, starting with yet which indicates the shift towards our phenomenon in need of an explanation. Our phenomenon is that a young deer mouse was moved two kilometers away, which is four times the distance where a deer mouse will usually never find its way home, and yet was able to return in less than two days. An answer choices which explains how the young deer mouse did this in a way that is consistent with deer mice generally struggling to find their way home will be the correct answer. Let’s see our options:
Answer Choice (A) We’ve been told nothing about how the environment affects a deer mouse’s ability to navigate, or really anything that would make the difference between the deer mouse’s home and where it is moved matter except for distance.
Correct Answer Choice (B) The researchers camped next to the deer mouse nest for several weeks, so it would make sense if the mouse recognized the campfire smell! The answer even specifies that the smoke drifted to the area the deer mouse was released. What this answer does is make the deer mouse’s situation exceptional, such that it is no longer weird that most of the time deer mice will fail to find their way home. Most of the time they don’t have a strong recognizable scent carrying kilometers away from their home!
Answer Choice (C) We’ve been told nothing about how the number deer mice affects a deer mouse’s ability to navigate.
Answer Choice (D) That was nice of them, but it doesn’t do anything for us! If anything this answer makes the situation more confusing, as the deer mouse was unable to see where it was taken; it was within a small dark box.
Answer Choice (E) Ok, but how would that explain the deer mouse’s ability to find its way home? This just makes the fact the deer mouse survived and was able to get home even more incredible, without doing anything to explain why this deer mouse was able to break the general trend of deer mouse navigation failure.