A museum directors, in order to finance expensive new acquisitions, di

Argument is fairly simple.

A museum director wanted more funds to buy more museum stuff. But he didnt have the funds. To get funds, he went ahead and sold a few of his products without seeking advice or opinions of others. The products that were sold in his opinion were more inferior to his other products and hence he thought he would get away with it.

The critics got to know. Critics became crazy. Said the director was stupid and sold the most important pieces in the gallery.

Later those same pieces were again sold at a higher price to other guys in the market.

Press became further crazy because their claims that the director was stupid had now more ammo.


Question: reasoning in the argument is vulnerable to the criticism that the argument does which one of the following?

Dumbing the question down: between the options given below, which option best describes the course of action taken by the critics?

Option A: (A) It concludes that a certain opinion is correct on the grounds that it is held by more people than hold the opposing views.

The argument does conclude that an earlier opinion was correct. But does it come to conclusion using new market figures that have come up or using the opinions of other people.
It uses market figures. Hence A is out.

(B) It rejects the judgment of the experts in an area in which there is no better guide to the truth than expert judgment.

It does reject the judgement of experts. But is there a better guide to the truth?
Yes there is. The director sold the products DISCREETLY. That means there were other experts whose opinion he could have sought.

Hence B is out.

(C) It rejects a proven means of accomplishing an objective without offering any alternative means of accomplishing that objective.
Irrelevant.
The objective is gathering funds
The critics do not care about the gathered funds. The critics care about the sold pieces.

(D) It bases a firm conclusion about a state of affairs in the present on somewhat speculative claims about a future state of affairs.
Irrelevant.
The critics have based a firm conclusion on the present state of affairs using support from past state of affairs.
They havent speculated anything.

(E) It bases its conclusion on facts that could, in the given situation, have resulted from causes other than those presupposed by the argument.
This is correct.

In option E, the critics who are making the argument base their argument on market figures. There could have been other reasons why the paintings on the market sold much higher. Maybe the purchaser did not have enough money to buy the painting when it was first on sale and now he does. Maybe the time when the paintings were first sold by the museum could have been a time of economic recession. There could be n number of reasons.