Logical Reasoning

PT123 · S2 · Q17 Hospital executive: At a recent conference

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Hospital executive: At a recent conference on nonprofit management, several computer experts maintained that the most significant threat faced by large institutions such as universities and hospitals is unauthorized access to confidential data.

Conclusion (in light of this / should)

We should make the protection of our clients’ confidentiality our highest priority.

Evidence

At a recent conference on nonprofit management, several computer experts maintained that the most significant threat faced by large institutions such as universities and hospitals is unauthorized access to confidential data.

Evaluate

We might not see any obvious flaw here at first. The author is basically taking the advice of experts from a recent conference on nonprofit management.

So let's try to argue the Anti-Conclusion.

Given that ... several computer experts at this conference on nonprofit mgmt said the biggest thread is protecting confidential data,

How could we argue that ... we should not make protecting our clients' confidentiality our highest priority?

Well, one thing that comes to mind, since this is a hospital executive is that,

We also might just say,

Goal

The flaw seems to be that the author is overly trusting of the recommendation of "several" (i.e. 3 or 4) computer experts.

There might be different ways to describe this, such as or .

17.

The hospital executive's argument is most vulnerable to which one of the following objections?

  1. The argument confuses the causes

    Bad Evidence Match

    Since this is structured confuses X with Y, we would want half of it to sound like the evidence and half to sound like the conclusion. The only "problem" discussed is that of unauthorized access to confidential data. But at no point are we ever discussing the causes of such a problem.

    16% picked this

  2. Correct

    The argument relies on the

    Why this is right

    This correctly identifies a flaw in the argument. This would be the Famous Flaw known as "Inappropriate Appeals", which has subflavors like Appealing to Emotion / Appealing to Opinion / Appealing to a Dubious Expert. This would be that last type. Who's to say that computer experts know what the biggest threat to hospitals is? They probably know mainly about computers in hospitals, not about running a hospital overall. Maybe debt financing is way more important. Maybe training and retaining good nurses and doctors is way more important. Maybe making sure that patients don't receive the wrong medication or surgery is more important. What would these computer experts know about all that?

    Skill tested: Flaw · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    50% picked this

  3. The argument assumes that a

    Famous Flaw Bait

    Famous Flaw Bait: causal flaw Bad Evidence / Conclusion Match Although this is one of the 10 famous flaws, it's not what's happening here. The conclusion is not even Causal. It's a recommendation that we make protecting confidentiality the highest priority. And the evidence doesn't present a correlation between two phenomena.

    10% picked this

  4. The argument draws a general

    Famous Flaw Bait

    Famous Flaw Bait: sampling flaw Bad Evidence Match Although this is one of the 10 famous flaws, it's not what's happening here. The conclusion is not a general conclusion about a group, unless we want to stretch and say the "group" is this hospital. That would mean that the evidence was about an unrepresentative sample of this hospital, but the evidence is about computer experts at a recent conference. This answer would match an argument saying, "The computer staff at this hospital are most concerned with protecting the confidentiality of patients' data. Therefore, the highest priority of all staff is protecting the confidentiality of patients' data."

    13% picked this

  5. The argument infers that a

    Bad Conclusion Match

    Since this is structured, infers that X is Y we would want to see that X matches the evidence and Y matches the conclusion (or assumption that takes us to the conclusion). The evidence did kinda present a property belonging to large institutions: supposedly the most significant threat is unauthorized access to confidential data. According to this answer, the argument went on to conclude that "The biggest threat affecting ALL institutions is unauthorized access to confidential data", but that doesn't match the conclusion at all.

    11% picked this

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