PrepTest 141 - Section 2 - Question 15 | Explanation & Discussion

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Written explanation

This is a Flaw or Descriptive Weakening question. The key words in the question stem are "reasoning is most vulnerable to criticism."

Foundational Skills
Causation
Causal Arguments
Alternative Hypothesis
Referentials

The stimulus presents an argument from a marketing consultant. The conclusion is that "the advertising campaign" (referencing "LRG's latest advertising campaign" for their "new products") "was ill conceived."

Okay, why should we believe this? There's really just one premise. That this season's sales figures are down in general and in particular LRG's new products are selling especially poorly.

Granted, there are two additional sentences, the first and second sentences in the stimulus. But those are largely irrelevant. How do we know this?

Well, the first sentence just says that the consultant (the author) predicted that the advertising campaign would be unpopular and ineffective. Why? We don't know. The consultant merely asserts her prediction without providing reasons. Okay, so that doesn't support the conclusion very much. "I predict your ad campaign will suck. Therefore, it sucked." No. But do note that this sentence serves as the referent for the phrase "the advertising campaign" in the conclusion. We do have to look back here to understand what "advertising campaign" is being talked about.

The second sentence says that LRG ignored her predictions. Okay. And that LRG took the advice of a competing consultant. Now what does that mean, "took the advice?" What advice? Unclear. But presumably (because of the rest of the stimulus) the advice was to move ahead with "the advertising campaign," the one that the original consultant didn't like. Again, this doesn't support the conclusion. "You ignored my prediction. You took my competitor's advice. Therefore, the ad campaign sucked." No.

So you see, we are back to just a single premise "sales figure are down and LRG's new products are selling especially poorly" to support the conclusion that "the advertising campaign" was ill conceived.

What framework should we use to analyze this argument? Well, the premise is a phenomenon and the conclusion is a hypothesis. Though not explicitly stated in those terms, the consultant is trying to provide a causal explanation for why sales are down. It's because the ad campaign was ill conceived.

Now that you've got your phenomenon-hypothesis glasses on, how do you want to respond?

I hope you're thinking about all the alternative explanations for the low sales figures. It could be because the ad campaign was ill conceived or it could be because a competitor offered a more compelling product at a lower price. Or it could be because the product itself was flaming hot garbage. Or it could be because the entire industry (what industry are we in anyway?) is shrinking. Or it could be because the entire economy is shrinking (recession). Those are all potential explanations of the low sales figures.

There's no reason given in the argument to favor the "ad campaign was ill conceived" hypothesis over any of the others. That's where the argument is most vulnerable to criticism.

In fact, if I'm to be even more critical, I think there is actually some reason to prefer the alternative hypotheses because it's not just the new products that are selling poorly, it's overall sales that are down. If truly the ad campaign was the cause, then we'd expect that only the new products would be selling poorly since the ad campaign was for "promoting new products." The fact that other products that have nothing to do with the campaign are selling poorly as well suggests that it's some non-advertising related economic factor that's responsible.

it fails to consider that economic factors unrelated to the advertising campaign may have caused LRG’s low sales figures

And that's exactly what (B) says. That the argument fails to consider other causal explanations, specifically, economic factors unrelated to the ad campaign. This is a cookie cutter answer for a cookie cutter argument: We see a phenomenon that has a number of equally plausible explanations yet the conclusion just picks one of them as says that's the explanation.

it takes for granted that LRG’s sales would not have been lower still in the absence of the competitor’s advertising campaign

But what makes this question tricky is answer choice (A) and the question you just did two questions ago, question 13 from this same section. If (A) wasn't here or if you didn't just do question 13, then I think this would have been just another unmemorable cookie cutter "alternative hypothesis" LR question.

As it stands, I think most people had a real hard time eliminating (A). With good reasons too.

So what's wrong with (A)? Why is it a trap answer?

For starters, notice that (A) talks about "the competitor's advertising campaign" whereas the stimulus references "LRG's advertising campaign." Are they the same? It's unclear. (A) needs to assume that they are. Remember we already discussed that taking the "advice of a competing consultant" was ambiguous though presumably it meant moving ahead with LRG's ad campaign, the one that the original consultant didn't like? Well, (A) requires us to disregard that interpretation and resolve the ambiguity in favor of the interpretation that taking "advice" means "using the competing consultant's advertising campaign." But we have no reason to favor this interpretation. Especially since taking "advice" could also mean a number of other things like for example: advice on execution of the ad campaign, not the ad campaign itself.

I'm not saying that this is a fatal flaw for (A). Just that (A) is weak for requiring us to make this assumption. If (B) - (E) required us to make more unreasonable assumptions, then (A) would survive this weakness. But alas, (B) is strictly better on this point.

What if we patched up this weakness in (A)? Does it contain other issues? Yes, it does. But first, let's see what (A) is really saying. The language isn't the most straightforward to parse. It says that the argument assumes that "LRG's sales would not have been lower still in the absence of the (and we're patching this part up) ad campaign." Okay. What does "would not have been lower still" mean? A small translation would produce "would not have been even lower" but that's still in the negative. Translating this further into a positive statement produces "would have been unchanged or higher." Now we're getting somewhere.

Let's shove this positive version back into the full sentence. (A) is really saying that the argument assumes that "LRG's sales would have been unchanged or higher in the absence of the ad campaign." Interesting. So that means that without the ad campaign (in the absence), LRG's sales would have been unchanged. Or that without the ad campaign, LRG's sales would have been higher.

If in the absence of the ad campaign, sales would have been unchanged, then that means the ad campaign was completely useless. It had no causal impact at all. It neither pushed sales up nor down.

If in the absence of the ad campaign, sales would have been higher, then that means the ad campaign actively hurt sales.

But is that really what the consultant assumes? It's not explicit but I think "no" is more reasonable than "yes." If I'm right, then (A) fails descriptive accuracy.

Why do I think the consultant never assumed this? Because she concludes that the ad campaign was "ill conceived." And given the full context of the stimulus, that should be interpreted not to mean that it had zero (or worse still, negative) impact, but rather to mean that an opportunity was lost to do better, to make a bigger causal impact. Because I don't think she's comparing the actual word (where the competing consultant's advice was taken) to a counterfactual world where no ad campaign was run at all. I think she's comparing the actual world to a counterfactual world where her advice was taken and so a different ad campaign was used. And so "ill conceived" means that the campaign was not as effective as some other campaign could have been.

Finally, I should mention that you might be reminded of question 13 from this same section. There, the logic behind (B), the correct answer, is similar to the logic we see here in (A) except that the difference is that the conclusion in question 13 is unambiguous: "cannot help to reduce crime."

it takes for granted that in LRG’s industry, new products should outsell established products

(C) says that the consultant assumes that new products should outsell established products. No, she doesn't. The consultant says that "new products are selling especially poorly" meaning even worse than the other, presumably established products. But that doesn't mean it should have sold better than the established products. She's not trying to compare new v. established products. She's trying to compare new product sales in the factual world v. new product sales in the counterfactual-follow-her-advice world.

it takes for granted that the higher sales of established products are due to effective advertising

(D) suffers from a similar problem to (C). (D) says that the consultant assumes that higher sales of established products are due to effective advertising. Again, she doesn't assume this. In the factual world, established products are selling better than the new products (though both are selling poorly). She doesn't assume any causal explanation for why the established products are selling better because she doesn't care. She's trying to explain the poor sales performance of the new products.

it confuses a condition necessary for increasing product sales with a condition that will ensure increased sales

(E) is a cookie cutter "sufficiency-necessity" confusion answer. But the problem is that we're not in conditional logic territory. We're in causal logic territory. The consultant simply doesn't assume that effective marketing is either necessary or sufficient.