gwd-16-3

Mel: The official salary for judges has always been too low to attract the best candidates to the job. The legislature’s move to raise the salary has done nothing to improve the situation, because it was coupled with a ban on receiving money for lectures and teaching engagements.

Pat:  No, the raise in salary really does improve the situation. Since very few judges teach or give lectures, the ban will have little or no negative effect.

Pat’s response to Mel is inadequate in that it

A.      attempts to assess how a certain change will affect potential members
        of a group by providing evidence about its effect on the current members.

B.       mistakenly takes the cause of a certain change to be an effect of that change

C.      attempts to argue that a certain change will have a positive effect merely by pointing to the absence of negative effects

D.      simply denies Mel’s claim without putting forward any evidence in support
        of that denial

E.       assumes that changes that benefit the most able members of a group
        necessarily benefit all members of that group.

这题答案是a？我怎么看都觉得是e啊。。。

E有两个根本性的问题：

1. assumption表达的意思不匹配题意

2. 没有针对Pat的话Since very few judges teach or...作出有联系的assumption。

我们可以从题干中直接得出benefit（raise the salary）是针对all members of that group的，而不是E中所讲的benefit the most able members of a group。反之，对应的ban是只影响目前的most able members of a group，因为他们有精力去教课。

其二，我们通过分析题干可知：Pat的逻辑是根据目前在职的judges的影响来推断出对于接下来的candidates的影响。所以我们可以得知他的假设就是对在职judges的分析结果可以直接应用到candidates身上，即A选项表达的意思。