#18 - Environmental scientist: It is true that over the past

[simonsap]

x6 increase in funding (x3 when we account for inflation)
x2 growth in area that needs funding
cc: more funding is needed, it's not enough

A - money has been wasted; catchy, but that doesn't explain how more money fixes the problem.. it will be wasted again
B - salaries have increased at a rate that consumes the increase in funding in a way that it now makes adequate funding inadequate?
C - cool story, but irrelevant
D - again, cool story, but irrelevant
E - funding was very little, multiplying a small amount by x3 or x6 does not give us a lot; seems legit

[Christmaspuppy]

Why answer A is incorrect? If those agency was using the fund in a wrong way, the fund couldn't be enough.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Christmaspuppy, answer choice (A) is a consistent fact between the past and the future. So if the agency has been consistently mismanaged, it's not clear how extra funding would help. Giving more funding to something that is consistently mismanaged won't magically make the extra funds used correctly. It's just giving them more funds to misuse. It doesn't give us anything to explain why we should augment the amount of money. It's just going to throw good money after bad. Answer choice (A) would be a great reason for us to change the management, not add additional funds.

When we are looking to resolve a paradox we are looking to explain how the two seemingly contradictory facts can work together. We start by looking at the two specific facts that seem to not work together. Here, it's that funding has increased sixfold to cover an area that has only increased twofold. Despite this increase, the surprising fact is that we STILL need more money to protect the wetlands, and the government should provide that money. We want to explain how that could make sense. We need something that shows that the current funding is still inadequate despite seeming to be a relatively meaningful increase.

That's what our correct answer choice does. It says that we are increasing such a small amount that we still need more funds to tackle the problem. If we were starting with a tiny sum, increasing it sixfold wouldn't make a dent in a large need. Let's say you have a loan from your buddy. You borrow 10,000 dollars. At first, you pay 1 dollar a month. 10 years later, interest has ballooned the loan to 20,000, but don't worry, you are paying 6 times as much (6 dollars a month). You still need to increase that amount significantly to make a dent in the debt. That's the situation described in the correct answer choice.

Hope that helps.

[Mitraaam]

Hi est15,

The stimulus describes how the amount of funding for wetlands preservation has tripled over the last 10 years, and yet the actual amount is still not enough and should be increased. There is no paradox here. Since the initial amount of funding is never stated, it is entirely possible that tripling a really low amount is still not enough. Answer choice (E) nails the issue on the head, and thus strengthens the scientist's conclusion.

From answer choice (B) we know that the salaries of scientists have increased at a rate higher than the rate of inflation. So what? First, we don't know the rate of inflation, and second - we have no idea what proportion of the overall budget is allocated to cover scientists' salaries. What if the rate of inflation is 3%, and their salaries increased by 4%? What if their salaries constitute only 1% of the government funding for wetlands preservation? Either way, just because you have a marginal increase in one type of (potentially insignificant) expense does not explain why tripling the budget will prove inadequate. That's like complaining that a 3-fold increase in your salary isn't enough because your rent increased faster than inflation.

This is a great example of a question where you absolutely had to focus on the numbers, notice the missing piece of information from the stimulus (what was the budget 10 years ago?) and prephrase the correct answer choice.

Hope this helps!

Let me know.

Hi,

This all makes sense, and I can understand the correct answer... however, I am confused on how you arrived to reasoning that there wouldn't be any paradox here as the scientist concludes his argument as there being a reason to consider increasing the current funding allotted. Normally I wouldn't think to doubt the conclusion. Wouldn't your first impression be to try to resolve the contrasting argument for the current budget being inadequate compared to that of what was allotted ten years ago? Given it was increased sixfold (threefold greater with inflation) prior to any increase at all, why can't there be an argument for still requiring another increase?

I'm just trying to understand how you came to argue that there isn't a paradox here, bc I normally wouldn't interpret this argument to read like how you laid it out. Then again, I could just be overthinking it. But would like to know, thanks!

[Dana D]

Hey Mitraam,

I will say that normally with a resolve the paradox question, there is more of an obvious conflict to resolve. That being said, we know there has to be something to resolve just based on the question stem, which tells us this is the case. Another way to see this paradox is to look at how the premesis and conclusion work together.

Looking at the stimulus, the conclusion is that the budget is inadequate and needs to increase. The rest of the stimulus, however, tells us of the significant increases that have occurred over the last ten years. These premises don't seem to support the conclusion that additional increase is needed - if anything, they are building an easy retort to the environmentalist. If they ask for more money, the opposition could use all of these premises to show that the cause has already gotten significant funding increases over the last 10 years. That is how you can tell there is something to resolve in this stimulus - the premises don't seem to work to justify the conclusion. It is only when we add in the correct answer choice and say that there was next to no funding ten years ago that we 'resolve' this conflict by showing that the increases, while 3 x the original amount, are still inadequate because originally there was no funding.

Hope that helps!

[massavenue]

Why answer A is incorrect? If those agency was using the fund in a wrong way, the fund couldn't be enough.

I wanted to chime in here. It took me a minute to figure out why A was wrong also and I fell into the same "trap" you did with regards to the bolded in your comment.

Answer choice (A) does NOT in fact say that. It only says that the agency has been mismanaged and run inefficiently for the past 10 years. You cannot assume that this has to do or has any direct connection to the funds it supposedly gave to managing the wetlands.

For example, if Make-A-Wish Foundation was responsible for the funding of the Boston Marathon and it was known that the Make-A-Wish Foundation was mismanaged, can you say, without a doubt, that this mismanagement affected how the funding and resources were spent on Boston Marathon? No you can't. Mismanaging/being run inefficiently is very broad in this case and could mean many things on Make-A-Wish Foundation and it does not have to mean or pertain to its funding of the Boston Marathon in this case.

Hope this clears it up.

[massavenue]

Why answer A is incorrect? If those agency was using the fund in a wrong way, the fund couldn't be enough.

I wanted to chime in here. It took me a minute to figure out why A was wrong also and I fell into the same "trap" you did with regards to the bolded in your comment.

Answer choice (A) does NOT in fact say that. It only says that the agency has been mismanaged and run inefficiently for the past 10 years. You cannot assume that this has to do or has any direct connection to the funds it supposedly gave to managing the wetlands.

For example, if Make-A-Wish Foundation was responsible for the funding of the Boston Marathon and it was known that the Make-A-Wish Foundation was mismanaged, can you say, without a doubt, that this mismanagement affected how the funding and resources were spent on Boston Marathon? No you can't. Mismanaging/being run inefficiently is very broad in this case and could mean many things on Make-A-Wish Foundation and it does not have to mean or pertain to its funding of the Boston Marathon in this case.

Hope this clears it up.

Wanted to elaborate more on (A). Had (A) said that the agency responsible had mismanaged the funds it gave to the wetlands for the past 10 years, it would have been a stronger contender. But it only said something along the lines of the agency responsible for giving the funds was mismanaged (as opposed to having the funds being mismanaged).

[Jeff Wren]

Hi massavenue,

The real problem with Answer A is that it doesn't explain how/why the current funds are inadequate, and changing the wording as you suggested doesn't fix this problem.

It may be helpful to think of the situation as causal. The stimulus states that the current funding is inadequate. In other words, the funding is the reason/cause for why the wetlands are not being adequately protected. Answer A actually suggests an alternate cause for why the wetlands are not being adequately protected that may have nothing to do with the funding. In other words, based on Answer A, for all we know the current funding is completely adequate and the problem is actually due to the mismanagement of the government agency. In that case, the way to solve the problem likely wouldn't be to increase funding, but rather to somehow address the mismanagement of the government agency.

Imagine that you were in charge of deciding whether to increase funding, and the agency responsible told you, "we need more funding because we mismanaged the original funds." Would you be likely to give them more money?

The only way that Answer A would support that the current funding is inadequate is if the lack of funding directly contributed to the mismanagement. For example, if the agency didn't have enough funds to hire qualified, competent people, so that they had to hire unqualified, incompetent people, which directly led to the mismanagement. This connection would need to be stated in the answer though.

And while it is true that the fact that the agency was mismanaged doesn't prove that wetland funds themselves were mismanaged, it certainly raises that possibility. Here though, even if the agency did mismanage the wetland funds, that is not a good argument for increasing the funds because the amount of funds weren't necessarily the problem.