PTC.S2.Q14 - British Government and UFOs...

thefemaleharveyspecter7

Hi, does anyone know why the answer is B and not C?

hank2023

The stimulus says that the British government has been criticized for not releasing info about UFOs, and that requests for information about them from researchers have been ignored. From these premises, the essayist concludes that this behavior makes us think UFOs are from other planets.

AC (B) and AC (C) are almost identical. AC (B) says that if the British government withholds UFO info, then the UFOs have been established as coming from other planets (check the conditional logic lessons if this translation from "only if" to "if, then" doesn't make sense). AC (C) says that if the British government denies requests for UFO info by civilian researchers, then the government has something to hide.

Both of these sufficient conditions are stated to be true in the stimulus, so the conditionals trigger. AC (C) therefore tells us that the government has something to hide. What does it have to hide? We don't know, that's all it tells us. The government could be hiding some super advanced military technology that it doesn't want to tell anyone about. You might want to assume that the government is hiding aliens, but that's not in the AC.

AC (B) doesn't have us make this assumption. Its necessary condition tells us that the UFOs are from other planets. This is exactly what the conclusion says we would think, and it doesn't force us to make any other assumptions.