Critical Reasoning

Mel: The official salary for judges has always been too low to attract the best
Candidates to the job. The legislature's move to raise the salary has
done nothing to improve the situation, because it was coupled with
a ban on receiving money for lectures and teaching engagements.
Pat: No, the raise in salary really does improve the situation. Since very few
judges teach or give lectures, the ban will have little or no negative
effect.
Pat's response to Mel is inadequate in that it
A. attempts to assess how a certain change will affect potential members
of a group by providing evidence about its effect on the current members.
B. mistakenly takes the cause of a certain change to be an effect of that change
C. attempts to argue that a certain change will have a positive effect merely
by pointing to the absence of negative effects
D. simply denies Mel's claim without putting forward any evidence in support
of that denial
E. assumes that changes that benefit the most able members of a group
necessarily benefit all members of that group


I chose B why the hell is OA is A??? Pls explain

tracyyahoo wrote:Mel: The official salary for judges has always been too low to attract the best
Candidates to the job. The legislature's move to raise the salary has
done nothing to improve the situation, because it was coupled with
a ban on receiving money for lectures and teaching engagements.
Pat: No, the raise in salary really does improve the situation. Since very few
judges teach or give lectures, the ban will have little or no negative
effect.
Pat's response to Mel is inadequate in that it
A. attempts to assess how a certain change will affect potential members
of a group by providing evidence about its effect on the current members.
B. mistakenly takes the cause of a certain change to be an effect of that change
C. attempts to argue that a certain change will have a positive effect merely
by pointing to the absence of negative effects
D. simply denies Mel's claim without putting forward any evidence in support
of that denial
E. assumes that changes that benefit the most able members of a group
necessarily benefit all members of that group


I chose B why the hell is OA is A??? Pls explain

Why (the hell) would you think that the answer is B? Where are the cause and effect?

A is the one. It clearly says that Pat only considered the current Judges in his analysis and tried to extrapolate the consequence to the potential memebers.

The official salary for judges has always been too low to attract the best
Candidates to the job.
The above statement implies that the best candidates don't take the job.

No, the raise in salary really does improve the situation. Since very few
judges teach or give lectures, the ban will have little or no negative
effect.
She is obviously talking about people who are presently called "judges" and who are not the best candidates that did not take the job.

Hence,
A. attempts to assess how a certain change will affect potential members
of a group by providing evidence about its effect on the current members.
Potential members is the best candidates

E. assumes that changes that benefit the most able members of a group
necessarily benefit all members of that group
Who are these able members??[/i]

Hi Geva,
I am still not able to reach the answer for this problem...can you help us in finding the correct solutions!!

Regards
Mukesh

Geva@MasterGMAT wrote:

tracyyahoo wrote:Mel: The official salary for judges has always been too low to attract the best
Candidates to the job. The legislature's move to raise the salary has
done nothing to improve the situation, because it was coupled with
a ban on receiving money for lectures and teaching engagements.
Pat: No, the raise in salary really does improve the situation. Since very few
judges teach or give lectures, the ban will have little or no negative
effect.
Pat's response to Mel is inadequate in that it
A. attempts to assess how a certain change will affect potential members
of a group by providing evidence about its effect on the current members.
B. mistakenly takes the cause of a certain change to be an effect of that change
C. attempts to argue that a certain change will have a positive effect merely
by pointing to the absence of negative effects
D. simply denies Mel's claim without putting forward any evidence in support
of that denial
E. assumes that changes that benefit the most able members of a group
necessarily benefit all members of that group


I chose B why the hell is OA is A??? Pls explain

Why (the hell) would you think that the answer is B? Where are the cause and effect?

tracyyahoo wrote:Mel: The official salary for judges has always been too low to attract the best
Candidates to the job. The legislature's move to raise the salary has
done nothing to improve the situation, because it was coupled with
a ban on receiving money for lectures and teaching engagements.
Pat: No, the raise in salary really does improve the situation. Since very few
judges teach or give lectures, the ban will have little or no negative
effect.
Pat's response to Mel is inadequate in that it
A. attempts to assess how a certain change will affect potential members
of a group by providing evidence about its effect on the current members.
B. mistakenly takes the cause of a certain change to be an effect of that change
C. attempts to argue that a certain change will have a positive effect merely
by pointing to the absence of negative effects
D. simply denies Mel's claim without putting forward any evidence in support
of that denial
E. assumes that changes that benefit the most able members of a group
necessarily benefit all members of that group


I chose B why the hell is OA is A??? Pls explain

A makes sense but Why is C wrong.......

1947 wrote:

tracyyahoo wrote:Mel: The official salary for judges has always been too low to attract the best
Candidates to the job. The legislature's move to raise the salary has
done nothing to improve the situation, because it was coupled with
a ban on receiving money for lectures and teaching engagements.
Pat: No, the raise in salary really does improve the situation. Since very few
judges teach or give lectures, the ban will have little or no negative
effect.
Pat's response to Mel is inadequate in that it
A. attempts to assess how a certain change will affect potential members
of a group by providing evidence about its effect on the current members.
B. mistakenly takes the cause of a certain change to be an effect of that change
C. attempts to argue that a certain change will have a positive effect merely
by pointing to the absence of negative effects
D. simply denies Mel's claim without putting forward any evidence in support
of that denial
E. assumes that changes that benefit the most able members of a group
necessarily benefit all members of that group


I chose B why the hell is OA is A??? Pls explain

A makes sense but Why is C wrong.......

Why is C right? Is pat pointing to the absence of negative effects?

EDIT: I take this back. Pat is indeed doing what C says: She's saying that the Ban the imposes has no negative effects, so the improved salary will indeed improve the situation. C is not the right answer because the question asks why Pat's argument is inadequate. C correctly describes what Pat is DOING, but does not explain why Pat's argument is an inadequate counter to Mel. We're not just asked to describe what Pat is doing - we are asked to weaken Pat's argument, and that is only really done by A. So the answer to the question "why is C incorrect?" is "because A points to a weakness in Pat's argument", while C does not.

A is the clear winner!