Q16 - Policy analyst: Increasing the size of a police force

[Aquamarine]

I had hard time to solve this question and couldn't find the exact flaw.

I was confused between B and C and ultimately chose C, but the answer is D.
I have no idea why D is right and others are wrong.

Can anyone explain me this question?
Thanks!

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type: Match the Flaw

Although some flawed arguments (particularly in Match the Flaw) have formal names - such as Part to Whole, Ad Hominem, Nec. vs. Suff - other flaws don't. This is a good example of the latter.

One of the best ways to try to identify possible flaws in an argument is simply to argue for the OPPOSITE of the author's conclusion (I call it "the anti-conclusion").

The author's conclusion was "we shouldn't respond to rising crime rates by increasing the size of the police force".

why?

Because "increasing the size of the police force is only a temporary solution" (a "stopgap" method is like a tourniquet ... it stops the bleeding but doesn't stitch up the underlying wound)

So how would you argue that a city SHOULD react to rising crime rates by increasing the size of the police force?

You might say, "More police can help deter crimes from occurring."

The author would say, "Yes, but that's only a temporary solution. It doesn't get at the root cause of the crime."

You might say, "Cool, well we're not going to be able to IMMEDIATELY solve the root causes of crime. How about we work on both? We'll increase the police force to temporarily slow down the crime rate and we'll simultaneously try to go after the root causes of crime."

That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Now I need to generalize that flaw. Why is it the author REJECTS the idea of increasing the police force? Because it's only a TEMPORARY measure, not a genuine SOLUTION to a PROBLEM.

So the flaw could be stated as,
The author assumes that if thing X doesn't PERMANENTLY solve problem Y then we should not do thing X. But maybe doing thing X helps us control problem Y as we look for a more permanent solution to the problem.

In terms of Match question shortcuts, I would be very suspicious of any answer choice whose conclusion does not take the form of "Therefore, we should NOT do _____."

(C) and (E) immediately look sketchy to me.

(C)'s conclusion is "you should ALWAYS do ____."
(E)'s conclusion is "you should look for OTHER ways to do ____."

I haven't even read the rest of them ... just skimmed for the conclusion to see if they're worth spending any time/energy on a 1st pass.

(A) says you shouldn't do X (institute overly demanding rules). Is that because [instituting overly demanding rules] is a temporary, not a permanent, solution to a problem? Nope. The premise here is that [instituting overly demanding rules] makes a situation worse. Not a good match. The original argument didn't say that increasing the police force makes the crime rate worse.

(B) This looks the same. We shouldn't build dams because dams worsen the effects of something. The original argument never said that increasing the police force makes something worse.

(D) This looks good. We shouldn't prescribe this drug. Why, because the drug is a temporary, not a permanent, solution to a problem? Yes! "It reduces the harmful effects of a disease" matches up with "a stopgap method of crime prevention" and "doesn't cure the disease itself" is a great match for "it doesn't get at the root cause of crime".

I would pick (D) at this point. It seems vulnerable to a similar objection we made to the original. How would I argue against (D)'s conclusion? I would say that doctors SHOULD still prescribe this drug, because even though it doesn't cure the disease, it makes life better in the meantime while we continue our efforts to figure out how to actually cure the disease.

Let me know if you're unclear about any of this.