Q16 - Salespeople always steer customers toward

[GeneW]

Can someone please explain why B is better than A or C? Thank you in advance.

[mck73]

I'm not an instructor so take what I say with a grain of salt.

P: If sales person -> steer toward product that gives sales person highest commission
C: Product that gives highest commission (Vitamin) -> salesperson's claim is inaccurate

The assumptions are:

1. vitamins are products that give sales people at health stores the highest commission.
2. steering customers towards product that gives sales person highest commission -> salesperson's claim will be inaccurate. (They'll do whatever it takes to sell you something, even if they straight up lie to your face)

(A) is wrong because the premise and the conclusion are different. Subsequently, the premise doesn't paraphrase the conclusion.

(C) is wrong because the issue isn't that sales people always steer customers towards products that give them the highest commission. That's something you just have to take as true. The real issue has to do with the gap or the assumption that if you, as a salesman, steer someone towards a product that gives you the highest commission, you'll do whatever it takes, including lie and make inaccurate statements, to get there.

HTH

[agutman]

PT69, S4, Q16 (Flaw)

The trigger "˜hence’ helps us find the conclusion of the argument: "when you buy vitamin supplements in a major health store, you can be sure that the claims the salespeople make about the quality of the products are inaccurate". That’s a really long sentence, it might be useful to boil it down to its core: "salespeople’s claims about product quality are inaccurate".
Okay, what is that based on? "Salespeople always steer customers toward products from which they make their highest commission." How is this argument going from steering toward certain products to making inaccurate claims about the quality of products? Quite a leap, isn’t it?

Salespeople always steer customers toward certain products --> you can be sure their claims about the quality of products are inaccurate

So, what kind of flaw do we have here? The author is implying that steering customers and making accurate claims are mutually exclusive. Isn’t it possible that one could use accurate claims to steer people toward certain products? Sure it is! Let’s see what the answer choices are like:

(A) it’s true that the premise is a claim... but it doesn’t paraphrase the conclusion; in fact, it says something quite different.

(C) the argument does talk about a group of people, but never drills down to any members of the group.

(D) this would lead to no conclusion at all (a necessary but not sufficient condition doesn’t allow a conclusion to be drawn); since this argument does have a conclusion, get rid of this answer choice.

(E) The only authority in the argument is the salespeople, and the topic is the products they sell _ so how is that outside their area of expertise? Get rid of it.

(B) This is a match! Notice the phrase "˜some claims are inaccurate’? That’s exactly what the conclusion of the argument was talking about! What was it based on? We don’t trust the salespeople (the source of those claims).

[andrewgong01]

PT69, S4, Q16 (Flaw)



(D) this would lead to no conclusion at all (a necessary but not sufficient condition doesn’t allow a conclusion to be drawn); since this argument does have a conclusion, get rid of this answer choice.
.

There's a part of this that I don't quite understand. I eliminated Choice "D" because there was no conditional language in the stimulus. However, in the past where this was the correct answer choice for Flaw questions, I think those stimulus did have a conclusion still, albeit a flawed conclusion from faulty reasoning . For example, Q22's of this same section (Prep69 LR4) has a credited response along these lines where it does have a conclusion