The official salary for judges has always been too low

Question

Mel: The official salary for judges has always been too low to attract the best Candidates to the job. The legislature's move to raise the salary has done nothing to improve the situation, because it was coupled with a ban on receiving money for lectures and teaching engagements.

Pat: No, the raise in salary really does improve the situation. Since very few judges teach or give lectures, the ban will have little or no negative effect.

Pat's response to Mel is inadequate in that it

A. attempts to assess how a certain change will affect potential members of a group by providing evidence about its effect on the current members. 
B. mistakenly takes the cause of a certain change to be an effect of that change.
C. attempts to argue that a certain change will have a positive effect merely 
D.by pointing to the absence of negative effects simply denies Mel's claim without putting forward any evidence in support of that denial 
E. assumes that changes that benefit the most able members of a group necessarily benefit all members of that group.

Makky07 · Answer

Marine,

I think you've mixed your answers up. I really think that the beginning of answer choice D is the phrase that completes C. It doesn't make much sense the way it's written. 
 
C should be "attempts to argue that a certain change will have a positive effect merely by pointing to the absence of negative effects". 

D should be "simply denies MelтАЩs claim without putting forward any evidence in support of that denial" 


D is the best answer.

Paul · Answer

Clearly, A is best.

Mel says: The official salary for judges has always been too low to  attract the best Candidates  to the job

A) says that the ban on receiving money for lectures and teaching engagements will not affect the situation and in that in fact, the raise in salary really does improve the situation. However, Pat's response is based on  current  members "Since very few judges   teach or give lectures..." This is not sufficient to explain how that ban will not hamper the recruitment of the best  candidates  as mentioned in Mel's argument.

D) Pat does give evidence to support his argument. "Since very few judges teach or give lectures, the ban will have little or no negative effect" is his argument although it is a weak one as explained above

lvb9th · Answer

Hey Paul, here I go.

A here as well, the best answer, imo

Paul · Answer

I demand that those who said D back up their answers

mirhaque · Answer

gee is this an ultimatum??
Pat's response to Mel about salary is just an opinion without any evidence or convincing logic. Among all the options D comes pretty darn close IMHO.

lvb9th · Answer

D.by pointing to the absence of negative effects simply denies MelтАЩs claim without putting forward any evidence in support of that denial Pat states that very few judges teach, so he actually does put some evidence forward to back upi his statements. IMO, D is incorrect, and also incomplete

marine · Answer

hi Paul
apologies for being late in reverting back.
I do not posess the OA for this question, I got this CR frm a yahoo grp archive.

shamilshah22 · Answer

Obviously A is the answer.

Pat explains that current Judges includes few who teaches or give lectures...whereas Mel was talking about attracting potential candidates which might want to go for teaching and lectures.

So mere raising salary govt. might not still get good quality of judges.....

Nitinaka19 · Answer

Hi,
We need to weaken the argument stated by PAT,who states that the situation does improve buy citing a evidence about the few judges.

Now option E states that the changes (that is the raise in salary) will benefits most of able members of a group (that is few judges ) will benefits all members of that group.

So isn't it the correct assumption?

Just to know the rights reason to know eliminates this option.

Thanks

kartickdey · Answer

bb   Bunuel  please clarify why option D is wrong

AbhishekP220108 · Answer

kartickdey  let me pitch in.

So, the reason we have to eliminate Option (D) is that it actually misrepresents what Pat said.

Option (D) claims that Pat just said 'You're wrong' without giving  any  backup or proof. But if you look at the text, Pat actually did give a specific reason. Pat said, 'Hey, look at the current judges—barely any of them teach anyway.'

That statement is his evidence. Now, is it  good  evidence? No, it’s actually pretty weak because it focuses on the wrong group of people. But it still counts as evidence. 
Since Pat didn't just give a flat denial—he actually tried to back it up with a fact—Option (D) is technically false

kartickdey · Answer

the point you have raised have been covered in the option D in the portion "  by pointing to the absence of negative effects  ......".

miag · Answer

Hi,

Let me try to help explain:

D) basically says that Pat denies Mel's claim without putting forward any evidence, which is not true.

Pat does offer evidence:
 
Pat's real flaw is that he:
 
 Uses evidence about  current judges  
 To draw conclusions about  potential candidates

Hope this helps!

KarishmaB · Answer

Here is the video solution to this question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DsRnDAb8uQ

The official salary for judges has always been too low

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The official salary for judges has always been too low

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