Q26 - Every Labrador retriever

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
Match the Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: It's training, not genetics, that accounts for the neighborhood Labrador's good behavior.

Premises: Every Labrador in the neighborhood is well-behaved. No pet would be well behaved if it were not trained.

Answer Anticipation:
I see a lot of conditional logic here so I'm gonna put pencil to paper:

Lab --> WB
WB --> Train
-----------------
Training not genetics caused the Labs to be WB

First off, genetics comes out of nowhere, so my correct answer will have to have a new concept in the conclusion. Secondly, the premises establish that Training is necessary for good behavior, but it doesn't establish that it's sufficient. And yet, it concludes that training and nothing else is responsible.

Correct answer:


Answer choice analysis:
(A) The recommendation in the conclusion is grounds for elimination.

(B) Correct! B establishes something is necessary then mistakenly concludes that it's sufficient and the exclusive cause of something. It also subtly introduces a new concept in the conclusion (icy roads, vs snowy conditions in the premises). Don't be deterred by "relatively more" and "in general." These are part of the subject, not the structure, and therefore don't have to match the stimulus. I was skeptical of this answer at first on those counts, but worked wrong to right and got rid of the other four choices.

(C) Premise mismatch: the two premises must be able to be chained. C's premises don't share a condition.

(D) Conclusion mismatch: The conclusion of the stimulus is Causal. D's conclusion is Conditional.

(E) This answer looks incomplete to me. As in, I think LSAC might have cut it off when they shared the test on LawHub. But judging just what's there, there are too many premises in E, and the conclusion isn't a comparative causal statement that says "it was one cause, not another cause."

Takeaway/Pattern:
Diagramming is great on all Match Family questions, but don't force a piece into the diagram if it doesn’t fit. The conclusion of this stimulus isn't conditional, so we need to stay true to its Causal nature and not force it. The problematic Causal conclusion is the essence of the flaw we're trying to replicate!