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E
Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!
Difficulty:
55%
(hard)
Question Stats:
67% (02:05) correct
33%
(02:30)
wrong
based on 1981
sessions
History
Date
Time
Result
Not Attempted Yet
A controversial program rewards prison inmates who behave particularly well in prison by giving them the chance to receive free cosmetic plastic surgery performed by medical students. The program is obviously morally questionable, both in its assumptions about what inmates might want and in its use of the prison population to train future surgeons. Putting these moral issues aside, however, the surgery clearly has a powerful rehabilitative effect, as is shown by the fact that, among recipients of the surgery, the proportion who are convicted of new crimes committed after release is only half that for the prison population as a whole.
A flaw in the reasoning of the passage is that it
A. allows moral issues to be a consideration in presenting evidence about matters of fact
B. dismisses moral considerations on the grounds that only matters of fact are relevant
C. labels the program as "controversial" instead of discussing the issues that give rise to controversy
D. asserts that the rehabilitation of criminals is not a moral issue
E. relies on evidence drawn from a sample that there is reason to believe is unrepresentative
A flaw in the reasoning of the passage is that it
A. allows moral issues to be a consideration in presenting evidence about matters of fact
B. dismisses moral considerations on the grounds that only matters of fact are relevant
C. labels the program as "controversial" instead of discussing the issues that give rise to controversy
D. asserts that the rehabilitation of criminals is not a moral issue
E. relies on evidence drawn from a sample that there is reason to believe is unrepresentative
20 Sep 2014, 21:08
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ajaym28
Dear ajaym28,
I'm happy to respond.
This is another great question from MGMAT. It has already be posted here:
a-controversial-program-rewards-prison-inmates-who-behave-14734.html
although the answer choices seems cut-off in that version, and they are complete in yours.
I would say (E) is a clear winner. You see the folks selected for this were already being reward for good behavior in prison. Well, it's hardly a surprise that good behavior in prison is a predictor of good behavior when released from prison. The surgery may well be irrelevant: we are looking at a group that is not all all representative, because from the total prison population, these people were chosen for their good behavior, so they were already "stand outs" as compared to the rest of the prison population. It is absolutely no surprise that these "stand-outs" continue behave better than their counterparts once they are all released from prison.
Does all this make sense?
Mike
21 Sep 2014, 12:57
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aditya8062
Dear aditya8062,
My friend, this question is answered by a careful reading of the prompt. The key phrase is . . .
Putting these moral issues aside,
Think about what this means. If the author puts something aside, that is a way of saying --- "I don't really consider that important; it's not as important as what I am going to say next."
It's as if the author says, "that's not important; here, instead, is my conclusion." If the author's argument is about what is or isn't important, and makes assertions concerning that, then we might be in a position to question what the author thinks is important. Here, though, the author say something is not important, and then draws a conclusion about something else.
In the bigger world, in real life, when presented with such an argument, we may well say, "Wait a moment! Moral concerns can't be dismissed like that!" That would be a sort of meta-objection: not an objection to the meat of the argument itself, but backing up and questioning the priorities behind the argument, the value-system from which the argument proceeds. We might do that in real life, but in the more limited context of the GMAT CR, that's not what we are doing. It's much more limited: is this argument, as presented, logical or not? We are only focused on the meat of the argument itself.
Does this make sense?
Mike
