Stockholders have been critical of the Flyna Company, a major furnitur

You're quite right that Flyna only uses lumber from certified mills, but that's not the EXACT conclusion we're trying to undermine. Rather, we're trying to undermine justification for the claim that Flyna's "Country X wood supply is obtained legally..."

How does the passage justify this claim? We're told that Flyna has hired auditors to "review documentation of the wood supply of Country X's lumber mills to ensure its legal origin," and that it makes "surprise visits to mills to verify documents." How does (D) impact all that?

Well, if only 10% of Country X's lumber mills have their documents verified each year, the vast majority are NOT having regular inspections. So even if a lumber mill has been certified in the past, if it's one of those 90% that doesn't get an inspection that year, there's no guarantee that its wood is currently legally obtained. So, (D) would undermine the justification for Flyna's claim.

Note that the question hinges on the gap between being certified and actually obtaining lumber legally. If surprise visits are necessary to verify documents, this suggests that Flyna is concerned that some lumber mills MAY be obtaining lumber illegally. But if only 10% of the country's lumber mills are inspected each year, that leaves 90% which COULD currently be using illegal lumber, even if they'd been certified in the past.

I hope that helps!
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Stockholders have been critical of the Flyna Company, a major furniture retailer, because most of Flyna's furniture is manufactured in Country X from local wood, and illegal logging is widespread there. However, Flyna has set up a certification scheme for lumber mills. It has hired a staff of auditors and forestry professionals who review documentation of the wood supply of Country X's lumber mills to ensure its legal origin, make surprise visits to mills to verify documents, and certify mills as approved sources of legally obtained lumber. Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills. Thus, Flyna's claim that its Country X wood supply is obtained legally is justified.

Which of the following, if true, would most undermine the justification provided for Flyna's claim?

A. Only about one-third of Flyna's inspectors were hired from outside the company. -> So, 2/3 of inspectors are hired within Country X. But, how can we assume, these inspectors will support illegal logging. It is very far assumption. Incorrect.

B. Country X's government recently reduced its subsidies for lumber production. -> Can we relate it to Country X wood supply is illegal. Incorrect.

C. Flyna has had to pay higher than expected salaries to attract qualified inspectors. -> This will strengthen the argument, we need to weaken it. Incorrect.

D. The proportion of Country X's lumber mills inspected each year by Flyna's staff is about 10 percent, randomly selected. -> In other words, 90% are not inspected. Are we saying by 10% audit, Country X wood supply is legal. This is not good, we missed the bigger part 90%. It is weakening the conclusion. Let's keep it.

E. Illegal logging costs Country X's government a significant amount in lost revenue each year -> Then Government will also oppose illegal logging, it will support the conclusion, not weaken. Incorrect.

So, I think D.

I think it is just a bad question

If one believes that 10% on a random sample is good - then why this has to undermine the credibility? - I think if the random sample is not mentioned - then it will undermine - but alas, shortcut or not, still a random sampling performed on 10% looks sensible and operationally make sense

now on A - agree to disagree too that 2/3rd of insider and only 1/3rd of outsider may not be so wrong - I guess this comes back to a which has the better answer - while A can be seen as wrong - but an audit from inside does not make it too wrong - agree that this weakens the conclusion

so if you weigh A or D - I guess D is definitely a better answer, albeit only a slight - unfortunately this is a bad question I guess

GMATNinja, the argument says that the company makes surprise visits. So even if 10 out of 100 mills are inspected, this inspection is done so without informing the mills. So shouldn't this strengthen our argument? Because by making surprise visits the company is not making a preference of visiting any particular mill. If 10/100 are visited, we can say that there is no reference given to any mill and that all the mills have any equal chance of getting caught

On the other hand (A) says that 2/3 are internally hired. The company has set up its own certification scheme. This 2/3 of this scheme is managed by its own employees. The way I see it, the entire game is in the hands of Flyna. So even if the company claims that the wood is legal because it is all verified and certified, the fact that (most of) this entire process is controled by the company does throw some doubt of trusting the claim. Yes, we need to assume that there is a possibility that the company/employees aren't 100% diligent. BUT I believe this is something very practical to assume event though nothing is mentioned in the argument

The right answer is the one that "most undermines" Flyna's claim that its Country X wood supply is obtained legally.

Let's start with (A):


So what impact does this have on Flyna's claim?

Keep in mind: all of the inspectors are CURRENTLY employees of Flyna. So if Flyna pressures its employees to give false reports, then all the inspectors would be equally affected, whether they were hired from inside or outside the company. So the number of inspectors that were hired from inside the company wouldn't be relevant.

Thinking about this from another angle: why would Flyna want its inspectors to give dishonest reports about lumber mills in the first place? Presumably, they are making an effort to use legally obtained lumber, so it's unclear why they would pressure their inspectors to lie. We could certainly imagine a scenario where Flyna would want its inspectors to lie, but that would require some pretty big leaps.

Finally, notice the above reasoning strays rather far from the exact wording of the answer choice. In other words, to even make (A) relevant, we'd need to make a whole host of assumptions about how Flyna treats its inspectors, and what it's hoping to get from inspections. And if we need to make assumptions to justify an answer choice, that's a sign it's not the right answer.

For all those reasons, let's get rid of (A).

How about (D)?


From this, we know that 90% of Country X's lumber mills are not inspected each year. Thus, for the vast majority of the mills Flyna uses, we have no guarantee that the lumber is obtained legally.

As you correctly point out, since the inspections are random, "all the mills have an equal chance of getting caught." But does this guarantee that none of the mills will use illegal lumber?

Not at all. To conclude that, we'd need to make a pretty big assumption about how the lumber mills behave. In other words, we'd need to assume that none of them cheat, and that the fear of inspection is enough to ensure compliance. So because this argument against (D) requires some big assumptions, it's not a good reason to reject it.

On the other hand, we don't need to make any assumptions about (D) to conclude that the vast majority of the lumber mills will not be inspected any given year. For that reason, (D) undermines the conclusion that Flyna's wood supply is legally obtained.

I hope that helps!
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D. The proportion of Country X's lumber mills inspected each year by Flyna's staff is about 10 percent, randomly selected.

I have gone through the explanations by experts in this thread, but I still seem to be missing something. I have broken my head but I am not understanding how Option D is undermining the claim.

....It has hired a staff of auditors and forestry professionals who review documentation of the wood supply of Country X's lumber mills to ensure its legal origin, make surprise visits to mills to verify documents, and certify mills as approved sources of legally obtained lumber. Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills. Thus, Flyna's claim that its Country X wood supply is obtained legally is justified.

Let's consider an example to understand better:
Total number of lumber mills in Country X = 100
Total number of lumber mills whose documentation is reviewed for their legal origin = 100
Total number of lumber mills that had surprise visits = 10 (Just trying to make a case for option D: 10% of all lumber mills)
Total number of lumber mills legally certified = 10 (assuming all mills that had surprise visits ere approved as legally obtained sources)
This implies, total number of lumber mills used by Flyna = 10 ("Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills.")

What am I missing in this example? How is option D undermining the claim?

AndrewN - Request you to please enlighten me and help pinpoint in my example what I am missing, if possible. Thanks in advance.

Hello, Pankaj0901. I think the point you are missing is that Flyna is claiming that all of its Country X wood supply is obtained legally, on the basis of these audits, when answer choice (D) tells us that a mere tenth of its suppliers of Country X wood are, in fact, inspected each year. This leaves significant room for doubting the claim, since up to 90 percent of its suppliers could be furnishing illegally obtained lumber in a given year. I suspect that the penultimate line of the passage is giving you difficulty: Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills. As part of an argument, this premise cannot be taken as fact. Rather, it is a view that is used to advance the conclusion. You could almost see the final two lines in a different light: Since Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills, Flyna's claim that its Country X wood supply is obtained legally is justified. This does not mean that Flyna uses only lumber from the ten percent of mills that are certified. Rather, the argument is assuming that what holds for the ten percent will hold for the entire chain of suppliers.

Does that help clarify the matter? Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew
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AndrewN GMATNinja

I'm trying to keep an open mind but D still feels like a stretch compared to A.

Can it not be that perhaps Flyna only sources its wood from 10% of Country X's lumber mills? In other words, Country X could be illegally logging most of its wood, but Flyna visits 10% of the country's mills (seeing as D does not say 10% of the mills Flynna sources from) and only buys from those that pass its checks. In which case, Flyna would be justified in claiming that "its Country X wood supply is obtained legally".

Appreciate your thoughts!

Why can't we choose option A when it's weakening the conclusion? how is it out of scope, I don't understand. Because as far as I know and see, new information can be used to weaken the argument. no?

You're correct that we don't know the exact lumber mills which Flyna uses, or the overall percentage. It's also true that if the lumber mills that Flyna uses are inspected, we'd expect the wood to be legally obtained. So if the 10% that Flyna uses happen to be the ones that get inspected, (D) would not weaken the argument, as you suggest.

Notice, however, that (D) specifies that the lumber mills inspected each year are "randomly selected." So if the inspections are done at random, that rules out the idea that Flyna is specifically inspecting only the mills it uses.

The argument concludes that Flyna's claim that it obtains wood legally is justified because of the inspections. But if the inspections only verify a randomly selected 10% of the lumber mills, that leaves 90% that might have illegally obtained lumber, and that Flyna might use. Since this weakens the argument that Flyna obtains its wood legally, (D) is correct.

I hope that helps!
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As you suggest, new information can definitely be used to weaken a conclusion. But as MikeScarn points out above, the problem with answer choice (A) is that it really doesn't weaken the conclusion.

Let's take a closer look:


You might be tempted to conclude from this that Flyna's inspectors (i.e. 2/3 of the inspectors) would be more likely to let lumber mills get away with illegally obtained wood. But is this idea supported?

Well, keep in mind that ALL of the inspectors are working for Flyna. So if Flyna's inspectors have a conflict of interest, it would apply equally to all the inspectors, not just the ones hired from inside the company.

Put another way, for (A) to be correct, we'd need to assume that Flyna employees hired from within the company are more likely to be corrupt than Flyna employees hired from outside the company. But at the end of the day, they're both Flyna employees, so there's really no reason to conclude this.

Additionally, the justification for (A) rests on the assumption that Flyna inspectors actually have a conflict of interest -- i.e., that Flyna secretly wants to use illegally obtained lumber. But again, we have no reason to believe this. Maybe illegally obtained lumber is lower quality? Maybe it's just as expensive? Maybe it's deficient for some other reason? Regardless, we have no reason to think that Flyna would actually prefer illegally obtained wood, or that the inspectors would have a conflict of interest.

For all those reasons, (A) doesn't weaken the argument, so it can be eliminated.

I hope that helps!
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