#12 - Criminologist: The main purpose of most criminal

[Peebljoh8981]

Could someone break this question down answer by answer?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Sure thing Peebljoh8981.

Before I look at the answer choices, I always start with the stimulus. You can't know what you want an answer choice to be doing until you have a good understanding of the argument in the stimulus. I'd break this argument down as follows:

Premise: The main purpose of criminal orgs is to profit
Premise: Biotech and IT are expected to generate huge profits

Conclusion: Criminal orgs will try to get into biotech and IT

I always draw flawed arguments with a space between the premises and conclusion to remind myself that there's something missing there. For a Justify question, I know I'll need an answer that connects those premises completely to the conclusion. When I prephrase, I think about the strength of the conclusion. The "will undoubtedly" language is super strong! How can we support that? We need something to get from they have a purpose to profit, there's an expectation that BT and IT will be profitable, to it's DEF. what these criminal orgs will do.

Answer choice (A): This is structured to support the idea that a criminal org's purpose is to generate profits. That's not the conclusion of the argument, and thus this answer choice isn't driving toward the correct conclusion.

Answer choice (B): This answer choice doesn't go far enough. Awareness of the possibility of profit in a sector isn't enough to say that the criminal orgs WILL engage in that sector. There could be lots of other reasons that they would/would not choose to get into BT and IT despite the potential for profit.

Answer choice (C): This is about what criminal orgs are currently doing, not what they will do from in the future. Think of this as a timeshift error. We can't jump from what they are doing to what they will do without further information.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer. This connects the premises to the conclusion. The criminal orgs are organizations with a main purpose to profit. The answer choice uses the strong language we need and says they WILL get into these sectors. Thus this answer choice connects what we know about criminal orgs to what the conclusion says they will do.

Answer choice (E): This is totally irrelevant to the argument. This does not at all say that the criminal orgs will be into legal activities. We don't even know if BT and IT are legal activities versus illegal.

Hope that helps!

[limeshl]

Is it possible to use the mechanistic approach for this question? Thanks in advance for the help!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi limeshl,

Yes, you can use the Mechanistic Approach to solve this Justify question.

The new/unconnected term in the conclusion is "to become increasingly involved in."

The unconnected term in the premise is "the main purpose."

The correct answer will link these two terms. A possible prephrase might be "If an activity promises to further an organization's main purpose, then that organization will become increasingly involved in that activity." This prephrase is similar to Answer D. Notice that while Answer D specifically mentions "generates profits," this information didn't really need to be in the correct answer, as the argument can still be justified without mentioning this term. However, the fact that Answer D does mention this idea is perfectly fine, even if it isn't really necessary.

The terms "biotechnology and information technology" are mentioned in both the premises and the conclusion, and therefore do not need to mentioned in the correct answer. (While the conclusion doesn't specifically mention these terms by name, the phrase "these areas" is referring to them.)