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

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!

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!

@GMATNinja

Option D states that the proportion of mills inspected is 10%. It can be so that the staff inspect only 10% and provide certifications to those. And, since, Flyna only buys from certified mills, it can buy from those 10% mills that are certified. We don't care if the staff inspected the 90% or not because Flyna doesn't necessary needs to buy from those mills.

Option A is the correct answer in my opinion since the group of inspectors are not independent and they might be biased in their inspection for reasons such as costs

This question isn't ideal since the reasons why (D) undermines the case for Flyna's claim aren't completely clear since the relationship between what (D) says and what goes on with Flyna and lumber mills in Country X is not entirely clear or logical. Does Flyna use lumber from all the mills in Country X? Does it certify only mills that it gets lumber from or also certify mills it doesn't get lumber from? Why does it randomly inspect 10 percent of all the mills Country X?

What would make more sense is that Flyna's staff inspects each year 10 percent of the mills from which Flyna gets wood, but that's not what (D) says.

I guess the fact that Flyna's staff inspects only about 10 percent of the mills in Country X casts doubt on the conclusion that "Flyna's claim that its Country X wood supply is obtained legally is justified," since mills that haven't been inspected recently could be producing lumber illegally. So, since (D) does cast at least a little doubt on the conclusion, it is the best choice.

All the same, since the scenario presented by the OA isn't clear and doesn't make complete sense, this question isn't great.

That said, (D) is the best choice since (A) doesn't really mean that the inspectors don't do a good job. After all, we don't have information indicating that inspectors hired from within the company have reason to fake the inspection results or the inspectors hired from within the company are not as honest as inspectors hired from outside the company. In fact, if there's something fraudulent going on with the inspections, then inspectors hired from outside the company would presumably also engage in the fraudulent behavior since they too are working for Flyna.

Also, notice that the passage states as fact that the inspectors "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." So, the passage appears to indicate that the inspectors do in fact ensure that the wood is of legal origin. Thus, the honesty of the inspectors is not open to question, meaning that (A) does not indicate any flaw in the certification system.

In the real world of "QC", it seems very common sense to have this 10%, but "randomly selected" check to ensure the certification. Thus, I would prefer A to D.

 
­Another thoughts regarding D: as it says "Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills. ". Even if 1% is randomly inspected, and thus, certified, the wood will only from this 1%, and it is ensured that the wood supply is legal. It seems A is the only good answer left. 

Thanks! This is helpful as I picked A with the same reasoning but agreed - there was no evidence to believe 2/3 of their in-house people would do their best to protect the company.

AjiteshArun can you pls chime in? So many experts have explained but still clueless

Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills.

Process of certification:
Step 1:
professionals who review documentation of the wood supply of Country X's lumber mills to ensure its legal origin,
Step 2: make surprise visits to mills to verify documents,
Step 3: and certify mills as approved sources of legally obtained lumber.

First of all whats happening here? Is documentation, surprise visit and certification happening first then the procurement?
Or procurement happening first then everything else?

Either way pls explain whats the flaw/gap in argument and how D makes sense if Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills - as long as it is certified whats the issue?

Hi MalachiKeti,

The most important thing here is to prioritise targeting the certification process. This will help us take a couple of troublesome options out.

Stimulus:
1. The author implies (but does not state directly) that certification depends on both a review of documentation and surprise visits. We can attack either or both of these.

2. We can attack the staff of auditors and forestry professionals.

3. We can also attack the statement "Flyna uses only lumber from certified mills".

We should also be open to things not stated in the stimulus that could undermine Flyna's claim that its X wood supply is obtained legally.

Option A: This option uses only before one-third, so we focus on whether {mostly Flyna employees} is better or {mostly non-Flyna employees} is better.

Generally speaking, we can assume that both hiring and oversight are easier internally (working with external providers and consultants is generally more opaque). Therefore, option A strengthens the argument, which is the opposite of what we need.

Option B: I like this option. Cutting subsidies can be expected to lead to a further increase in illegal logging. Given that illegal logging is already widespread, even more illegal logging could crowd out legal supplies of wood.

However, this option doesn't directly target Flyna's processes.

Option C: This option could have been good if it had told us that Flyna compromised on the quality of its inspectors. But that's not what it says. Instead, C tells us that Flyna has had to pay "higher than expected salaries" to attract qualified inspectors. We don't care about the cost as long as the inspectors are qualified.

Option D: This option stands out, for multiple reasons.

Firstly, checking for compliance almost always involves a trade-off. 10% may be a common target (as reed990 points out in this post), but that doesn't mean that it's a good target.

Secondly, frequency is also an issue. Even though Flyna uses only certified mills, there is always the risk of noncompliance post-certification. That is, once a mill has been certified, how can Flyna be sure that it (the mill) hasn't started (or gone back to) using wood obtained from illegal logging?

By the way, this is a real concern. For example, in the garment and cocoa industries, many producers put on a show for the occasional inspection and then go right back to using (for example) child labour.

Effectively, a mill could easily go 10 years or more without being inspected again. Therefore option D gives us a major reason to doubt Flyna's claim.

Option E: If illegal logging costs country X's government a significant amount in lost revenue, that strengthens the claim that illegal logging is widespread. It's safe to say that the more serious a problem is, the harder it is to overcome. However, we should go negative on option E, because it doesn't target Flyna's processes.

Not to doubt the solution but I was curious about the answer choice D.

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

from the argument, I understand that the mills was inspected by 'a staff of auditors and forestry professionals not Flyna's staff

Can you point out where did I misunderstand the argument?
GMATNinja MikeScarn

To be honest, about the "D" answer, the term "randomly selected" made me fall into error (The proportion of Country X's lumber mills inspected each year by Flyna's staff is about 10 percent, randomly selected).

It seems to say that in a statistical approach the lumber mills have been inspected. In fact, nowhere exists a way to inspect each element of a production!

For me is definitely A the right answer ! These are the GMAT questions that i hate anyway....

I'm late to the party again here, but in case it helps somebody out there: we're told that Flyna hired a staff of auditors and forestry professionals. Since that staff was hired by Flyna, it's accurate to refer to those auditors and forestry professionals as "Flyna's staff".

I hope that helps a bit!