Editor: Articles in Gardening Magazine often spur sales of the plants they describe, particularly among people new to gardening. Accordingly,...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
Editor: Articles in Gardening Magazine often spur sales of the plants they describe, particularly among people new to gardening. Accordingly, we will no longer publish articles or accept advertisements praising the beauty of rare wildflowers. Most such plants sold to gardeners have been difficult to propagate under cultivation, so plant sellers often collect them in the wild. Our new policy is part of our efforts to halt this yearly plundering of our native plant populations.
Which of the following, if true, casts the most doubt on the wisdom of the magazine's new policy as a way of pursuing the intended effect?
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| Articles in Gardening Magazine often spur sales of the plants they describe, particularly among people new to gardeners. |
|
| Accordingly, we will no longer publish articles or accept advertisements praising the beauty of rare wildflowers. |
|
| Most such plants sold to gardeners have been difficult to propagate under cultivation, so plant sellers often collect them in the wild. |
|
| Our new policy is part of our efforts to halt this yearly plundering of our native plant populations. |
|
Argument Flow:
The editor starts by establishing that their magazine influences plant sales, then announces a new policy banning rare wildflower content, explains that this content leads to harmful wild collection practices, and concludes by stating the policy's environmental protection goal.
Main Conclusion:
The magazine will ban articles and ads about rare wildflowers to stop the yearly destruction of native plant populations.
Logical Structure:
The argument links the magazine's sales influence to environmental harm through a cause-and-effect chain: magazine articles → increased sales → wild collection (due to cultivation difficulties) → environmental damage. The policy aims to break this chain at the first step.
Prethinking:
Question type:
Weaken - We need to find information that would make the magazine's new policy less effective at achieving its goal of stopping the plundering of native plant populations
Precision of Claims
The argument makes specific claims about causation: magazine articles → increased sales → wild collection → environmental damage. The policy assumes stopping articles will break this chain
Strategy
To weaken this policy, we need to show that banning rare wildflower articles won't actually reduce wild collection. We can do this by finding scenarios where:
- The policy doesn't address the root cause
- The policy might backfire
- The policy targets the wrong link in the causal chain
This choice tells us that new gardeners often fail to care for plants properly and become discouraged from buying them again. While this might reduce repeat purchases, it doesn't address the initial purchase that still drives wild collection. The magazine's influence particularly affects new gardeners, so even if they don't buy again, the initial harmful collection still occurs. This doesn't cast doubt on the policy's effectiveness.
This states that plant sellers have no other inexpensive way to reach new gardeners directly. However, this actually supports the policy rather than weakening it. If the magazine is their main channel to new gardeners, then the policy would be more effective at reducing sales and wild collection. This strengthens rather than weakens the policy.
This says demand rarely exceeds what can be collected in the wild. This doesn't weaken the policy because the goal isn't to eliminate excess demand but to reduce overall wild collection. Even if supply meets demand, reducing that demand through the policy would still decrease harmful collection practices.
This explains that rare wildflower propagation depends on complex environmental interactions with other organisms. While this explains why cultivation is difficult, it doesn't cast doubt on the policy's wisdom. It actually supports the premise that these plants are hard to cultivate, which is why reducing demand makes sense.
This reveals that revenues from wild plant sales are funding research into cultivation techniques that would solve the propagation problem permanently. This creates a critical flaw in the policy's logic - by reducing wild collection (and thus revenues), the policy might eliminate funding for research that could permanently end the need for wild collection. The policy could actually prevent the long-term solution it's trying to achieve. This strongly weakens the wisdom of the policy.