The approval policy states: “Whenever an application undergoes manual review, its status will show as approved.” Xiao Lin submitted his application at 9:05 in the morning. In the afternoon, he checked the system: “The status shows approved.” A colleague then said: “So the application must have undergone manual review.” Does the colleague’s inference hold up?

Answer: B

• AIt holds up: since the approval policy says so, seeing the approved status confirms manual review.✗ Wrong: this mistakes the policy’s stating one sufficient condition for the approved status being the only way that status can arise, committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
• BIt does not hold up: the approved status could also come from automatic approval or an administrator’s change.✓ Correct: the status can arise in multiple ways, so it cannot be concluded that the application underwent manual review.
• CIt does not hold up: the error lies in inferring from the approved status not holding that manual review did not occur.✗ Wrong: this misreads the case; what was observed was the approved status, not any reasoning back from the status being unapproved.
• DIt does not hold up: the system status was checked only once, and one observation is far too few.✗ Wrong: this mislocates the problem; checking more times would only confirm what the page displays and still reveal nothing about how the status was produced.