QUESTION TEXT: University president: Research institutions have an obligation…
QUESTION TYPE: Principle
PRINCIPLE: Shows promise ➞ Obligation to pursue research in a theoretical field
No Obligation ➞ Doesn’t show promise
ANALYSIS: I shortened the principle above. The full principle is that something must
‘show promise to yield insight into the causes of practical problems that affect people’s quality of life’
That’s a mouthful. It’s better to simplify such a statement, but keep in mind the full idea is a bit more complex than whatever you draw.
On this type of question, you need to do two things:
- Figure out the sufficient and necessary condition, and the contrapositive.
- Make sure the wording in the answer matches the concept in the stimulus. So, ‘yielding insight into non-practical problems’ wouldn’t lead to any obligation.
You can only prove a necessary condition. So you need to find an answer that has one of the sufficient conditions from the ‘PRINCIPLE’ section, and that uses that condition to justify the necessary condition.
___________
- We don’t know when it’s correct to deny funding.
- We have no idea if this is proper. It doesn’t yield insight into practical problems.
- This is administrative trivia. It has nothing to do with research aimed at practical problems.
- This sounds wrong. Economic behavior is relevant to the practical problems of people’s lives.
- CORRECT. Disease is a practical problem. It sounds like the institute had an obligation to fund research in this theoretical field.
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Brad says
Could this problem be solved quicker by simply noticing that this only answer that explicitly mentions a research institution is the correct answer?
FounderGraeme Blake says
It’s a good thought, but you have to watch for synonyms. A university is broadly an organization devoted to research (as well as teaching) and they also often have separate research institutes. The fact that this argument is made by a university president reinforces that point.
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.