Question Type:
Inference (must be true)
Stimulus Breakdown:
We're reading to combine ideas, using CONDITIONAL, CAUSAL, QUANTITATIVE, or COMPARATIVE ideas.
CONDITIONAL: If a govt practice facilitates the abuse of power and there's no compelling reason to do it, it shouldn't be done.
Keeping secrets qualifies, and too often it's done for insubstantial reasons.
CONDITIONAL: When govt officials conceal that they're keeping a secret, this facilitates more abuse.
Answer Anticipation:
There are many conditional/causal claims here. It sounds like when the govt keeps a secret, it enables abuses of power. And when they conceal that secret, it enables abuses of power. And according to the first sentence, those practices should not be undertaken.
My prediction would be that they'll tie together the first and last sentence to get something like "government officials shouldn't conceal from the public that they are keeping a secret".
Correct Answer:
C
Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) "Most" cases? We can't quantity that it's more than 50%.
(B) This is making a fake negation out of the rule in the first sentence.
(C) Yes, this seems fair. If there's no compelling reason, then practices that enable abuse of power shouldn't be done. "Concealing a secret" enables abuse of power. Thus it shouldn't be done.
(D) "Guilty" sounds very new, and the facts were describing "faciliating" the abuse of power / "opening up the opportunity". So there's nothing about the govt. officials themselves being the ones committing the abuse.
(E) This says "if keeping govt secrets WOULD make it easier to abuse power, then govt officials shouldn't keep secrets." This is too definitive and sweeping, because the first sentence allows for possible exceptions where you might have a compelling reason to do something that might facilitate the abuse of power.
Takeaway/Pattern: The correct answer happens to tie together ideas and details from all four sentences. We apply the conditional rule in the first sentence to the fact in the second sentence. The part about "justifiably keeping secrets" has no actual bearing on this answer choice. It's just there to make it more complicated / less appealing, I think. The conditional in the final sentence and the one in the first sentence give us an A -> B - > C chain, which Inference questions love to test and reward.
If conceal a secret -> enables abuse --> shouldn't be undertaken unless there's a compelling reason
#officialexplanation