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June 2007, Logical Reasoning 1, Question 17

Transcript

Question 17, when a question asks you for an objection that an argument is most vulnerable to, you are dealing with a flaw question. Your job on a flaw question is to find the error in the argument. The argument as written is bad in some way and you have to pick out the answer choice that describes how. Before you can find the error in the argument, you have to understand it, which means knowing its conclusion and it's evidence.

The conclusion here is found in the last sentence we, meaning the hospital that the hospital executive works for, should make the protection of our clients confidentiality our highest priority. The evidence that the hospital executive gives for this conclusion is some stuff that happened to recent conference on nonprofit management. There are some computer experts who maintain that the biggest threat faced by large institutions like hospitals is unauthorized access to confidential data.

The flaw in this argument is not particularly common on the outset, it basically concerns the nature of the experts and their expertise. We know their computer experts, we don't know that they are hospital administration experts. So their priorities may not be the priorities that the hospital should set. We're gonna look for that in the answer choices.

Go to answer choice A, answer choice A says that the argument is confusing causes with solutions. But this argument never talked about any causes of problems. There's a problem, unauthorized access to confidential data, but the cause of it is not mentioned. Go to answer choice B, answer choice B says that the argument relies on the testimony of experts.

And it does, whose expertise is not shown to be sufficiently broad to support their general claim. And it isn't, this is the problem with this argument. Now glance the other answer choices just to see why they're wrong. Answer choice C says that the argument is confusing correlation with causation. But again, this argument never mentioned causes.

Answer choice C says that the argument is drawing a general conclusion about a group, but that's not what's going on here. Their conclusion is just about the hospital that belongs to the hospital executive, not about a group. Answer choice E is a another version of choice D, it says that the argument is inferring that something that's true of large institutions is true of all institutions.

But this argument doesn't make any claims about all institutions just about the hospital. So the answer is answer choice B.

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