Q17 - Office manager: I will not

[YLAGUNAS]

I was undecided between B and E and ended up choosing E. My reasoning for this was that the Supplier's response was not addressing the quality of the paper and was instead focusing on how the paper was made, thus ignoring the "legitimate concern."

Can someone please explain why B is correct?

Thanks!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Really good question! Thanks for bringing this one to the forum.

So you're reading answer choice (E) as saying that "hey, the stationary supplier is way off track, and ignores the real issue." Right? That makes sense, but we need to look very carefully at the langue cues. What does it mean to ignore something? It means to not address it. Does the stationary supplier fail to address the quality of recycled paper? No. The stationary supplier says specifically, that recycled paper is not necessarily inferior.

Because the stationary supplier addresses quality, answer choice (E) cannot be said to represent something the stationary supplier did.

Answer choice (B) though makes exactly your point:

My reasoning for this was that the Supplier's response was not addressing the quality of the paper and was instead focusing on how the paper was made

Let's look at the incorrect answers on this one:

(A) is strange. Why should the stationary supplier recognize ignorance in the manager's prejudice against recycled paper?
(C) is out of scope. The issue of environmental concern is not addressed.
(D) is unsupported. The office manager need not understand the basic technology for making paper.
(E) is not true. The stationary supplier does address the issue of quality, but offers irrelevant information to support the claim about quality.

Hope that helps!

[griffin.811]

Im not seeing how B uses irrelevant facts to justify a claim, the facts all seem relevant.

He says "Hey, recycled paper isn't necessarily lower quality. In fact, the best paper was made was made from recycled materials..."

The only way I see this as irrelevant is MAYBE because he says "since the beginning of time..." where as we are talking about the present, but this seems like a big stretch because he goes on to say "the only reason for the change was due to lack of material" which implies it wasn't because this new method was of better quality.

Thanks in advance!

[poop123]

I was having trouble with this too, but consider the facts used. they are about the history of paper making and why wood fiber replaced recycled materials, but does not address any change in quality. The finest paper may have been made out of a certain material at first, but that does not mean that the new material is now inferior.

ex.) Our finest sweaters were once made of brillo pads, we ran out, so now we use wool.

[jiangziou]

I think it would be relevant if the Stationary supplier is talking about the history of recycled paper or how to make recycled paper.
Instead he is talking about the history of the finest paper, which is totally irrelevant.