Which one of the following, if true, would most call into question the author's assertion in the last sentence of the...

jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com on April 14, 2020

Why is the answer choice Danish agency invested more funds into the Indian project than US agency invested into the Brazil project wrong? I thought Danish succeeded in India because it involved government cooperation at all levels and thus can be inferred Danish invested less. Sorry I just didn't get this question. Thank you

Jimmywantstogotolawschool on May 14, 2020

Also looking for an explanation

shunhe on May 18, 2020

Hi @Steph, @jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com, and @Jimmywantstogotolawschool,

Thanks for the question! This question is asking us for something that would weaken the author's statement in the last sentence of the passage, which is that the Danish agency has a good chance of remaining competitive and profitable for the long run because it recognizes the importance of local involvement at all levels. To anticipate a little, we can tell that one way to weaken this is if local involvement at all levels isn't really that important, since if that's not the case, then it doesn't matter that the Danish agency pays so much attention to it. This is what (A) does to the argument. If the India project's profitability had to do with subsidies, and not necessarily with local involvement, then it's not necessarily true that local involvement is important, and so that would weaken the author's assertion about the Danish agency, which rests on the underlying assumption that local involvement is something that is important. Hope this makes sense, let me know if you have any further questions! 

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

ielkind on July 12, 2020

But in this case, why is (A) correct over (B)? Don't they both weaken the argument that local involvement was responsible for the project's success in India?

Nishant-Varma on September 29, 2021

^Yes, can you elaborate on this as well?

Ravi on February 7, 2022

@Nishant-Varma, A is correct over B because we need to find answer choice that provides us one of the three ways to weaken a causal claim, as that's what the author's assertion is. We can weaken causal claims by showing cause without effect, effect without cause, or an alternative cause. With A, we get an alternative cause. A says that it wasn't local involvement that made the project a success; rather, it was temporary subsidies.

The problem with B is that it's possible that the Brazil project was much smaller in scope. The relative value of the initial investment may matter, but we would need more information before saying the absolute value is important. Thus, we can get rid of B.