#16 - Professor: Unfortunately, pharmaceutical companies and

[Dancingbambarina]

Hey Dancing,

If answer choice (B) were watered down to say something like "if the departments prestige increases, it is likely the funding from other sources besides profit-driver institutions will increase" then it is still runs counter to the conclusion, which states that the funding has to come before any other achievements will follow.

Hope that helps!
Dana

Thank so much Dana. That really clears things up.

If the wrong AC were in contrapositve form, would that order be represented as the same as in the repeat form i.e. the order is contraposed to keep the same flaw ?

Thank you so much

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Dancingbambarina,

I'm a little unclear on what you are asking, but since the contrapositive is logically equivalent to the original conditional statement, a wrong answer would still be wrong even if it were in the form of the contrapositive.

For example, the answer that we are looking for in this question is:

More money Money from sources other than Big Pharma

as Nikki describes in his earlier post (Post #3)

Answer D is the contrapositive of this statement, which is why it is correct.

However, if another answer had said:

Money from sources other than Big Pharma More money

That answer would be wrong because it is a Mistaken Reversal of what we need.

And if that same wrong answer were in the form of the contrapositive:

Not More money Not Money from sources other than Big Pharma

That answer would still be wrong, but now it would be described as a Mistaken Negation of what we need.

[Dancingbambarina]

Thank you for your very helpful response.

With B, contraposed it seems like it's correct. Please may you help as to why it's not?

Regarding "subsequently" in the necessary of B, would this mean the conditional is really only one-way ? From my understanding, this word plays a huge role in this answer being wrong. Which leads me to my 2nd question:

Why is "subsequently" such a big deal when "will" is not a big deal in conditional relationships?

And a 3rd question if you may: Would "substantially" really be that much of a deal-breaker in AC B?

Thank you so much

[Dana D]

Hey Dancing,

As we talked about earlier, answer choice (B) is incorrect because it contradicts the conclusion:

If answer choice (B) were watered down to say something like "if the departments prestige increases, it is likely the funding from other sources besides profit-driver institutions will increase" then it is still runs counter to the conclusion, which states that the funding has to come before any other achievements will follow.

The conclusion explicitly states that funding must come before prestige can - there is a temporal relationship here. The word "subsequently" is a big deal because it also establishes a temporal relationship - but in answer choice (B) it means that prestige is coming before funding. Again, this contradicts the author's argument, so this cannot be correct.

Put another way - the stimulus says somethign like "without successful fundraising to buy seeds, we won't grow the apples needed to attract visitors to our apple orchard. "

Answer choice (B), however, says "if we grow lots of apples and attract visitors to the orchard, we will then be able to successfully fundraise."

The timing is an issue here - the answer choice isn't inferring that funding occured via logic, they are saying that if prestige increases, funding will follow, which does not make sense based on the stimulus.

"Substantially" isn't a dealbreaker here since we're just told to "gain prestige" and that is not qualified at all - any increase in prestige would be relevant.

Hope that helps!