Recently a court ruled that current law allows companies to reject

Question

Recently a court ruled that current law allows companies to reject a job applicant if working in the job would entail a 90 percent chance that the applicant would suffer a heart attack. The presiding judge justified the ruling, saying that it protected both employees and employers.

The use of this court ruling as part of the law could not be effective in regulating employment practices if which of the following were true?

(A) The best interests of employers often conflict with the interests of employees.

(B) No legally accepted methods exist for calculating the risk of a job applicant's having a heart attack as a result of being employed in any particular occupation.

(C) Some jobs might involve health risks other than the risk of heart attack.

(D) Employees who have a 90 percent chance of suffering a heart attack may be unaware that their risk is so great.

(E) The number of people applying for jobs at a company might decline if the company, by screening applicants for risk of heart attack, seemed to suggest that the job entailed high risk of heart attack.

ID 16848

abhimahna · Accepted Answer

E is wrong because of two reasons :

1. It says the number might decline. Notice the word MIGHT. hence, We are not sure whether it will decline.
2. Even if the number of applicants decline it may happen that this time we are going to get applicants which are not at any risk. So, it might actually help employers to get the desired applicant easily. hence, E is wrong.

MA · Answer

B is ok. 
seems OG problem. its been long time, actually sice joining the Gmat Club, that i really have not focused on OG problems. 

(A) out of scope
(B) make sense. if there is no legall and accepted methods exist to do so, then it ruling doesnot work. it creats problem i detecting 90% chance of heart attack.
(C) irrelavat
(D) Employee's awareness doesnot matter. if there is a method calculating 90% chance of having heart attack, then it doesot hiders the judge's rulling to be effective.
(E) irrelavat and out of scope.

jpv · Answer

Go with (B).

If there is no method to calculate the heart risk, then law would not be effective.

Abhishek009 · Answer

Reject Job applicant   --------->   If there is a 90 percent chance of Heart attack ( working in the Organisation)

This use of his court ruling as part of    the law could not be effective in regulating employment practices if which of the following were true?

(A) The best interests of employers often conflict with the interests of employees. -  Suggests it is mutually beneficial to both the Employers and Employees.

(B)  No legally accepted methods exist for calculating the risk of a job applicant's having a heart attack as a result of being employed in any particular occupation.

If this statement is true the entire reasoning falls apart.

(C) Some jobs might involve health risks other than the risk of heart attack. - Out of Scope.

(D) Employees who have a 90 percent chance of suffering a heart attack  may be unaware that their risk is so great.  -  Irrelevant we are talking about new applicants.

(E) The  number of people applying for jobs at a company might decline  if the company, by screening applicants for risk of heart attack, seemed to suggest that the job entailed high risk of heart attack. - Irrelevant.

Hence IMHO (B) is undoubtedly the best.

Skywalker18 · Answer

Recently a court ruled that current law allows companies to reject a job applicant if working in the job would entail a 90 percent chance that the applicant would suffer a heart attack. The presiding judge justified the ruling, saying that it protected both employees and employers.

Type- Weaken
Boil it down - Law that allows companies to reject a job applicant if working in the job would entail 90% chance of heart attack has protected both employees and employers
Pre-thinking - Is there are legally accepted standard to determine the risk

This use of his court ruling as part of the law could not be effective in regulating employment practices if which of the following were true? 
(A) The best interests of employers often conflict with the interests of employees. Irrelevant
(B) No legally accepted methods exist for calculating the risk of a job applicant's having a heart attack as a result of being employed in any particular occupation. 
Correct - then this law might be used unfairly against job applicants
(C) Some jobs might involve health risks other than the risk of heart attack. Irrelevant
(D) Employees who have a 90 percent chance of suffering a heart attack may be unaware that their risk is so great. Irrelevant
(E) The number of people applying for jobs at a company might decline if the company, by screening applicants for risk of heart attack, seemed to suggest that the job entailed high risk of heart attack. Irrelevant

Answer B

bvg · Answer

Hi all, Though option B is the right answer with indubitable explanation, I would like to understand why option E is irrelevant. Because for the employer to access whether a job would entail 90% of heart attack, the employer need to screen applicants for heart problem. Without this screening it is not possible for employer to entail the probability of heart attack. This behaviour on part of the employer would lead to drop in number of applications for the job. This works against the court's intension of protecting employers. Isn't it? Please explain.

AbhiGarg2007 · Answer

I think apart from above 2 explanations given by abhimahna , another explanation could be as following:-

Question stem says :- The use of this court ruling as part of the law could not be effective in regulating employment practices if which of the following were true?

Keyword in Question stem is “EFFECTIVE” .

If Employer honestly reveals the heart attack risk involved in job then effectiveness will be achieved in protecting both Employers & Employees. While question stem reads " could not be effective".

Choice B says that if there is no legal method at all to calculate risk then how can one declare or assess risk of heart attack. If one can not assess or detect risk , ruling could not be effective in regulating employment practices.

ChiranjeevSingh  :- Please validate my reasoning whether it is correct.

AbdurRakib · Answer

Premise:    Court allowed Companies to  reject applicant who has a higher chance of getting a heart attack .

Conclusion(from the part of the question):   Court's decision could  not  be  effective  for rejecting applicant

Assumption:  
  To reject applicant ,higher chance of getting a heart attack is not a useful/effective measure 
 
Answer Choice (B) Strengthened the assumption above .

Correct Answer (B)

dcummins · Answer

The stem provides some context and a judgement. The factset is that a recent ruling was passed to allow companies to reject applicants who would have a 90% chance of a heart attack if they were to work in the companies' given job.

This fact and ruling assumes that the companies can actually detect these applicants otherwise the ruling is useless.

Therefore, for the ruling to be effective, companies must be able to detect job applicants who would hit the 90% threshold.

This use of his court ruling as part of the law could not be effective in regulating employment practices if which of the following were true?

A is incorrect because the best interests of employees or employers have nothing to do with the effectiveness of detecting a heart attack.
B is correct because it presents a fatal flaw in the effectiveness. If no accepted method exists for calculating the risk of a person having a heart attack then how can the employers enforce the ruling? They cant. B is correct.

C is not conducive to the effectiveness of the ruling. 
D is exactly why the ruling was introduced, but it doesn't help evaluate the effectiveness of the ruling
E is incorrect because the number of applicants isn't relevant to the effectiveness of the ruling

CrackverbalGMAT · Answer

The right answer here is  B . E is kind of tempting, and is the trap answer here. One of the key things you wanna look out for is the specifics of the statement in the conclusion. We are looking for a statement that suggests that this rule would not help regulate employment. Well if people choose not to apply because there is some stated risk, this is in effect, a form of indirect regulation. So ultimately, it actually kind of strengthens the conclusion.

- Matoo

anshul0130 · Answer

VeritasKarishma  - I have a query on the argument. can you please help in clarifying it ?

Argument says - Recently a court ruled that current law allows companies to reject a job applicant if working in the job would entail a 90 percent chance that the applicant would suffer a heart attack. The presiding judge justified the ruling, saying that it protected both employees and employers.

My query - If current law already allows companies to reject a job applicant, what ruling court has passed. I am not getting this part.

KarishmaB · Answer

Note that laws are generic. They need to be interpreted by the court on case to case basis. Future cases can refer to previous rulings if they are applicable in their own cases too.

For example, the law may say that safety of both parties needs to be ensured before any hiring. Now a judge needs to rule whether "a 90% chance of applicant's heart attack" falls under this law.

The question is why this ruling may not be effective in regulating employment practices? Why can't this ruling become a part of hiring criteria?

(B) No legally accepted methods exist for calculating the risk of a job applicant's having a heart attack as a result of being employed in any particular occupation.

If there is no legally acceptable method of calculating the risk of heart attack of a candidate, how can this ruling be useful? A company may reject an applicant on the premise that his risk of heart attack in the job is above 90% but if this case comes to court, there is no legally acceptable method to prove that the candidate's risk is above 90%. Then the law is meaningless. Hence, this law cannot become a part of hiring criteria.

This is correct.

priyanshu14 · Answer

Dear Team,
I have done the question correctly. 
I request you to share the detailed explanation of this question so that I can check if my process is correct in answering the question.
Since the question belongs to OG 2010, I tried to find out the official answer explanation but failed on internet.
Please help me out.
Thanks in advance
Priyanshu

agrasan · Answer

Hi  GMATNinja   KarishmaB

Could you please explain why option E is not correct?
Is it wrong because if people choose not to apply due to screening of applicants for risk of heart attack then it is working in favor of companies, hence, effectiveness is not challenged.

Please let me know if this reasoning is right or wrong.

DmitryFarber · Answer

agrasan

The issue is with what the question is asking for. We're supposed to provide something that would make it hard to  legally regulate  companies in accord with this ruling. We're not trying to determine whether any of these answers would mean bad or good news for companies or applicants. B works because it there's no way to calculate that 90% risk, then any employer could say that they turned someone down because of this risk. There would be no way to apply the law, saying that some hiring decisions were legal and others were not.

E, on the other hand, is just about whether fewer people apply. This might be good for companies (less risk) or bad (fewer applicants to choose from), but either way, it doesn't have any effect on our ability to regulate companies, so it doesn't matter.

soniasw16 · Answer

How did you get that the point of the question is to provide something that would make it hard to legally regulate companies? I thought the point of the question is to protect BOTH employees and employers, and if we can't protect EITHER/OR, that would weaken the argument. Hence I thought E is correct, because there is a possibility it might be bad for companies (due to fewer applicants to choose from)

DmitryFarber · Answer

Look at the question itself, not the conclusion. Sure, the conclusion is about protection, but the question is not about protection at all. It's asking us for something that would prevent the law from being "effective in regulating employment practices." Just because a law might have some negative consequences does not mean it can't be used to effectively regulate. For instance, if I imprison someone for robbery, that might create unfortunate consequences for their family or the community. But that doesn't mean we didn't effectively apply the law. Same thing here--we can effectively apply this law whether it reduces the number of job applicants or not. But if there's no valid way to calculate that 90% figure, then we can't apply the law.

Recently a court ruled that current law allows companies to reject

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