In considering the fact that many people believe that promotions are often given to undeserving employees because the employees successfully flatter their supervisors, a psychologist argued that although many people who flatter their supervisors are subsequently promoted, flattery generally is not the reason for their success, because almost all flattery is so blatant that it is obvious even to those toward whom it is directed.

Which one of the following, if assumed, enables the psychologist’s conclusion to be properly drawn?

Medical researcher: Scientists compared a large group of joggers who habitually stretch before jogging to an equal number of joggers who do not stretch before jogging. Both groups of joggers incurred roughly the same number of injuries. This indicates that stretching before jogging does not help to prevent injuries.

Which one of the following, if true, would most weaken the medical researcher’s argument?

Superconductor development will enable energy to be transported farther with less energy lost in transit. This will probably improve industrial productivity, for a similar improvement resulted when oil and natural gas replaced coal as the primary fossil fuels used in North America. Shipping costs, a function of the distance fossil fuels are shipped and the losses of material in transit, decreased for factory owners at that time.

The claim that superconductor development will probably improve industrial productivity plays which one of the following roles in the argument?

The French novelist Colette (1873–1954) has been widely praised for the vividness of her language. But many critics complain that her novels are indifferent to important moral questions. This charge is unfair. Each of her novels is a poetic condensation of a major emotional crisis in the life of an ordinary person of her time. Such emotional crises almost invariably raise important moral questions.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

The view that every person is concerned exclusively with her or his own self-interest implies that government by consent is impossible. Thus, social theorists who believe that people are concerned only with their self‑interest evidently believe that aspiring to democracy is futile, since democracy is not possible in the absence of government by consent.

The reasoning in the argument is flawed in that the argument