Q1

[nicholasasquith]

Narrowed it down to B and D, but ended up picking D.

I feel that both ACs are accurate in their descriptions and omit different portions from the structure of the passage:

B) This is a summary of the info from paragraph 1, 2, and 4, but omits the methodological difficulties discussed in paragraph 3 and 4.

D) This is a summary of info from paragraph 2, 3 and 4, but omits the discussion of Tucker's place in history in paragraph 1.

Perhaps I am missing the central argument and that is why I chose D?

[ohthatpatrick]

This is easily one of the most unusual LSAT RC passages I've ever seen, because it seems less like an autonomous essay and more like an intro to someone's dissertation.

Q5's got my back, as it refers to this whole passage as "an introduction to a text".

So there's definitely no central argument, or Scale, to this passage, although the author does anticipate some possible concerns readers might have with his sources/methodology.

The issue with (B) vs. (D) is really, "What is the purpose of this passage?"

If you were thinking, "this passage is the intro to a research project on Tucker", then (B) is the much better fit.

If you were thinking, "the author is only interested in Tucker as an example ... the author's REAL focus is to discuss the pros/cons of documenting recent events or living persons", then (D) is the much better fit.

I never got anything to support the idea that "problems inherent in the quest for objectivity" was the main focus, and Tucker was just a specific example brought up to flesh out that claim.

Instead, I got the idea (primarily based on the 1st paragraph), that the author's main focus is to talk about Tucker. The author ends up discussing methodological concerns about his study of Tucker.

I like how you were counting up which / how many paragraphs each answer choice touched upon. However, given how important 1st paragraphs are to the big picture, I would certainly prefer an answer that dealt with "1, 2, and 4" to one that only dealt with "2, 3, and 4".

There are other tricky Main Point questions in which you'd get down to two answer choices that seem more or less accurate, at which point you need to ask yourself, "Which of these answers better embodies the purpose of the passage?"

For example, in passages in which the author describes a problematic situation and then offers a potential remedy at the very end, an answer choice that was "remedy-focused" would beat one that was focused on "describing the problem".

Hope this helps.

[noah]

I was just reading this post to prepare to dive into the thread on the passage map, and I'd add to Patrick's explanation that if I were to have predicted an answer along the lines of (D), I wouldn't have included that the biographer is striving for objectivity, but would have said the biographer struggles with people's lack of objectivity about themselves. So, the biographer is struggling with someone else's questionable objectivity through techniques such as corroboration.

This is dicey stuff (much safer to choose (B) because the third paragraph's themes are used to demonstrate that the biography is complete, not the other way around), and I fully expect someone to argue and perhaps win here..