Q11 - Lobbyist: Those who claim that automobile exhaust emis

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
Match the Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: people who claim auto emissions are a public heath risk are wrong. Premise: during the last century, auto emissions increased and every indicator of public health improved dramatically.

Answer Anticipation:
First thing's first: we need to figure out what this question stem is asking. We know it's got something to do with a flaw, and we also know that we're looking for parallel reasoning, so that makes this a weirdly-worded Match the Flaw question. Of course, this means we need to ID the flaw: just because public health improved over the last century doesn't mean that nothing that happened over the last century is a risk to public health. And since the stem asks us to effectively demonstrate this flaw in the correct answer, we should predict that the answer will make it pretty obvious that this is a bogus argument. If anyone is reading this and thinking "Reduction to the Absurd," bravo! That's exactly what we're trying to do here: demonstrate that a line of reasoning is bad by showing that line of reasoning leading to a clearly-false conclusion.

Correct answer:
C

Answer choice analysis:
(A) There's nothing in this answer to match the correlation between the rise of auto emissions and the improvement in public health. Eliminate!

(B) Same problem! There's no correlation expressed in this argument.

(C) Here's our matching correlation: since cell phones were invented, the number of traffic accidents has decreased. And the conclusion? Cell phones aren't dangerous to use behind the wheel. This sounds like a good match for the conclusion in the stimulus (auto emissions aren't a risk to public health), so this one is a winner.

(D) Once again, this answer fails to establish a correlation between the invention or rise of something and the improvement of some other thing. Eliminate!

(E) Same problem again! No correlation.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Don't be freaked out by odd-seeming question stems. Take the time you need to figure out what it's asking you to do, with the expectation that it will be something you've done plenty of times before. Non-standard seems to be the new standard of the LSAT, and we find that the crux of most non-standard questions is just figuring out your task. Once you do that, you can generally approach the question in a standard way without too much other trouble.

#officialexplanation

[andreperez7]

I was trapped by answer choice (A) , because my prephrase was that the flaw is that the offer is ignoring that positive factors can outweigh the effect of a negative factor when we look at an outcome overall, and using that to defend a negative factor (Automobiles exhaust.) That made answer choice A attractive, because obviously not inspecting an airplane before it flies is dangerous, and since the example was so obviously dangerous it looked like with this answer "the flaw in the lobbyist's reasoning can most effectively be demonstrated."

However, Laura, above, points out there is a correlation issue at play here. Specifically, that despite one negative factor increases, another the incidence of another positive result has also increased.


Takeaway: The LSATs rewards thinking in terms of causation/correlation, try to see that issue in flaws to help yourself hone in on the correct answer choice.

[smiller]

Takeaway: The LSATs rewards thinking in terms of causation/correlation, try to see that issue in flaws to help yourself hone in on the correct answer choice.

Excellent point. You won't see causation in every LR question, but it's so important to notice when it shows up!