Q4 - In view of the considerable length

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Principle-Support

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Chief should be held accountable for corruption.
Evidence: Sure, no evidence has directly implicated her, but she's been head of this department for a long time (and the corruption is widespread).

Answer Anticipation:
We have to get from "the police chief has had a long tenure heading up this dept" to "the police chief should be held accountable for the dept's corruption, even though no evidence has implicated her". We might prephrase something like, "You're responsible for the bad stuff that happens in the organization you lead, even if we have no evidence that you were involved with the bad stuff".

Correct Answer:
E

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Do we know that this chief KNOWINGLY TOLERATED corruption? No, so we can't apply this rule.

(B) This would let us say that our chief must be AWARE of the corruption, but it doesn't let us derive that our chief is ACCOUNTABLE for the corruption.

(C) This rule only lets you derive that someone SHOULD NOT be held accountable. We need a rule that lets us derive that someone SHOULD be held accountable.

(D) This rule wouldn't apply to our chief, because she HAS been in charge for very long.

(E) YES! Our chief has been in a position of authority for a long time [if PREMISE], and so this rule lets us derive that the chief is accountable for the corruption [then CONCLUSION].

Takeaway/Pattern: Like many Principle-Support questions, focusing on what you're trying to prove in the Conclusion often renderns many/most/all the other answer choices wrong. We need a rule that we could apply to our chief in order to derive the idea that she is accountable. Only (E) gave us a rule that was structured, "IF such-and-such is true, THEN the person should be held accountable".

#officialexplanation