Critical Reasoning

Hi All,

The following is a GPrep question.

Can someone please tell how to approach "most strongly against" question ? For e.g. in the below question, can someone please tell how to reach to correct answer E i.e. how to kick out rest 4 options.

[spoiler]OA = E.[/spoiler]

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Junior biomedical researchers have long assumed that their hirings and promotions depend significantly on the amount of their published work. People responsible for making hiring and promotion decisions in the biomedical research field, however, are influenced much more by the overall impact that a candidate's scientific publications have on his or her field than by the number of those publications.

The information above, if accurate, argues most strongly against which of the following claims?

a. Even biomedical researchers who are just beginning their careers are expected already to have published articles of major significance to the field.
b. Contributions to the field of biomedical research are generally considered to be significant only if the work is published.
c. The potential scientific importance of not-yet-published work is sometimes taken into account in decisions regarding the hiring or promotion of biomedical researchers.
d. People responsible for hiring or promoting biomedical researchers can reasonably be expected to make a fair assessment of the overall impact of a candidate's publications on his or her field.
e. Biomedical researchers can substantially increase their chances of promotion by fragmenting their research findings so that they are published in several journals instead of one.

I will not be too worried about the wordings here, it is a Must Be True/Inference Question. On positive one, it might have asked which of the following are best supported, in negative one it has asked which one can be disapproved using given info:

Researchers: Amount of publication affects their chance of promotions.

Evaluators: The impact of publication is important.

Option E: Fragment the research in several paper to have more amount of work, to get promoted, which is clearly being disapproved by researchers, as they r looking for impact rather than volume.

I am not too worried about the wordings here, it is a Must Be True/Inference Question. On positive one, it might have asked which of the following are best supported, in negative one it has asked which one can be disapproved using given info:

Researchers: Amount of publication affects their chance of promotions.

Evaluators: The impact of publication is important.

Option E: Fragment the research in several paper to have more amount of work, to get promoted, which is clearly being disapproved by researchers, as they r looking for impact rather than volume.h

Luckily, I answered it as Option E too. Below is my reasoning:
Our aim is to find the option that goes against the information provided and what we can infer.
Option A: It can be supported by the information in the passage. The junior's need published articles and that of significance.

Option B: The passage doesn't say anything about it.
Option C: The passage doesn't say anything about this too.
Option D: It can be inferred as it is clearly said that people responsible for hiring and other responsibilities look for the overall impact.
Option E: The words "have long assumed" in the first line hint that the information suggests against the number of published texts. It on the contrary supports published texts of significant impact. Thus this is what we are looking for.

Hope it helps.

first thing first its a rare type question but i guess if one is doing well may get this type of question .

the question certainly is MBT one but the order is reversed.With reverse i mean we are provided with an inference and we have to select a stimulus or premise.

In this case the inference is hirings and promotions
depend on overall impact rather than on the amount of their published work.

question stem is basically asking to which of the following is this inference arguing.

so definitely the correct ans must discuss either
support that hirings and promotions depends on on the amount of their published work OR on overall impact.

now coming to option
a. Even biomedical researchers who are just beginning their careers are expected already to have published articles of major significance to the field.........irrelevent

b. Contributions to the field of biomedical research are generally considered to be significant only if the work is published.........half true we need information about either amount of publish or impact

c. The potential scientific importance of not-yet-published work is sometimes taken into account in decisions regarding the hiring or promotion of biomedical researchers........not discussed out of scope

d. People responsible for hiring or promoting biomedical researchers can reasonably be expected to make a fair assessment of the overall impact of a candidate's publications on his or her field.........asessment is valid or not is not discussed


e. Biomedical researchers can substantially increase their chances of promotion by fragmenting their research findings so that they are published in several journals instead of one.......if this is true then certainly the given stimulus is arguing against it

The argument says that number of publications doesn't matter, what matters is the overall impact.

'E' says - researchers can increase their chances of promotion by publishing articles in multiple journals.

This is completely opposite of the expectation of the people responsible for making hiring and promotion decisions

therefore,'E' is the best choice

I am pretty sure that the right Answer is E