#14 - Pratt: Almost all cases of rabies in humans come from

[Administrator]

This argument presents the conclusion in the middle sentence:

• "there is little justification for health warnings that urge the removal of any bats residing in buildings where people work or live."

The premises supporting this conclusion appear in the first and last sentences:

• "Almost all cases of rabies in humans come from being bitten by a rabid animal, and bats do carry rabies."
  
  "Bats are shy animals that rarely bite, and the overwhelming majority of bats do not have rabies."

The reasoning here relies on bats being shy and not having rabies, and on that basis indicates that we need not worry about removing them from buildings where people work and live.

Answer choice (B) weakens the argument by showing that bats in people-inhabited buildings present a certain type of problem. Namely, when any animal (including bats) become rabid, they not only stay near where they are (which would be buildings) but become far more aggressive. If this is the case, the wisest course of action would be to remove now what could be a future source of serious problems. that idea weakens the argument, and thus (B) is correct.

[Lsat180Please]

Hi! I would appreciate some help with this question and a good prephrase. Would a good one maybe be "something that says we should be concerned about bats even though they rarely bite and most of them do not have rabies?" From there, how would you attack these answers and react? thanks!

[James Finch]

Hi Lsat180Please,

Weaken questions like this can be tough to come up with a very precise prephrase. Instead, the best way to prephrase a stimulus like this is to understand how it works mechanically, and tailor a prephrase as specifically as possible to attack the conclusion.

Here, we have a conclusion that is then supported by two premises, neither of which are specific to the case the conclusion addresses (potentially rabid bats in human-occupied buildings). With that in mind, my first thought would be to make one or both of those premises inapplicable to the specific case in the stimulus, and test the answer choices to see if any do that. Sometimes there is a fairly obvious way to do that that you can add to your prephrase, but I can't think of one in this case. Instead, I'll test the answer choices based on the more general criteria.

(A)--Seems to support the conclusion, if anything. Loser.

(B)--This one takes a moment to think through, but once you do, the implications are clear: "less mobile" seems to fit the scope of being in buildings, and "more aggressive" is a direct attack on the premise that bats are shy and rarely bite. Contender.

(C)--Seems promising at first (attacking the same premise as (B)) until I thought it through: this would actually help widen the scope of the conclusion from just bats to "most rabid animals," while we're trying to make it reasonable to get rid of them. Contender on first pass, but ultimately a Loser.

(D)--Clearly strengthens the conclusion. Loser.

(E)--Irrevelant. Loser.

So (B) and (C) are the only attractive answer choices here, and it does take a moment to realize the difference between what they both do, as both are aimed at the same premise. But always take the time on these questions, especially at this point in the test, to think through logical implications and make sure that what an answer choice seems to do is what it actually does.

Hope this helps!

[lsbound22]

I feel like B is a weak weakener, if that makes sense. It doesn't destroy the argument, but it serves its purpose, I guess. My thought process during BR was that by showing that rabid bats are outside of the generalization of all bats made by Pratt at the end, whereas "B" shows how rabid bats could potentially be amongst the "any" left in proximity to people in buildings, and of course more dangerous. I also don't know what purpose "less mobile" was serving in this a/c. Was it to up the rigor of the question. Would I be going too far to say that there's some relationship between the bats being shy and "less mobile"?

[Jeremy Press]

Hi lsbound22,

This is such an interesting question, and I was just talking through this one with a student of mine yesterday!

I agree wholeheartedly with your assessment that answer choice B does not fully invalidate the conclusion of the argument. But, as you correctly note, that's not necessary on a weaken question, where the task is simply to cast some doubt on the conclusion. Answer choice B does cast that doubt (it's something that makes the premises slightly less likely to lead necessarily to the conclusion--for the reasons that James identifies in the post above yours), thus it's enough to select it.

The reference to rabid bats being "less mobile" is, as James notes, intended to provide some loose additional support to the idea that they might be found in buildings (after all, being in a building would by itself make them "less mobile," since there's less space for them to move in). Does that reference automatically mean they'll be in buildings? No, but it makes it slightly more likely that they will be found there. That's all we need for the weakening effect we're looking for. To address your last question, if that's how we read that reference, then I don't think it's necessary to see any correspondence between shyness and lessened mobility.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[Becca1924]

Hi! I understand now why B is right, but I don't fully understand why C is wrong. Can someone else please explain it to me?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Answer choice (C) just doesn't impact the argument much either way here, Becca. Even if most animals that carry rabies are from species that normally wouldn't bite people, we can't say anything about if it's justified or not to remove bats from buildings. The other animals don't make an impact here. We don't know how likely they are to bite. We don't know how likely they are to carry rabies. We don't know if health officials recommend removal of them as well. It's just not connected to the argument in a way that would impact the conclusion.

Hope that helps!

[shakinotstirred]

I got this choice wrong by not fully understanding the implications of the choices and picking A.

In this question we are trying to weaken the argument that "there is little justification for health warnings that urge the removal of any bats residing in buildings where people work or live." (So maybe lets try to find a choice that will give us some (even a little) justification for removing bats where people work or live?!)

A- I initially chose this with the reasoning that maybe if its more likely to infect other bats than other animals all these building bats would be infecting each-other and then we would be left with a big problem of all these infected bats inside a building. This could maybe question the second half of the last sentence "...the overwhelming majority of bats do not have rabies" , so I thought. Just because a rabid bat is much more likely to infect another bat than to infect any other type of animal .. doesn't necessarily mean its going around infecting a bunch of bats and it definitely does not mean that just because it is more LIKELY to infect another bat than a dog -lets say- that now a bunch of bats in the building will be infected .. maybe it is just 1 more thats infected.. maybe its none! This choice doesn't give us enough an answer which would weaken the idea that there is little justification for health warnings that urge the removal of any bats ...

B- Notice the strong wording of this choice. "Rabid bats are less mobile than other bats but are MUCH more aggressive." This is it. In our stimulus we have "Bats are shy animals that rarely bite..." this doesn't say RABID bats! Our answer choice is showing us that Rabid bats are much more aggressive actually. So much for being shy! Pratt is saying there is little justification for health warnings that urge the removal of ANY bats residing in buildings... what about these aggressive Rabid bats we just learned about from choice B?! Even them being less mobile would weaken Pratt's argument here- saying they are less mobile throws out the idea that maybe these bats will relocate somewhere else, and the people in the building won't have to deal with them. But, answer choice B is giving us Rabid bats are MUCH MORE aggressive + doesn't seem like they're going anywhere (while not for now at least), "less mobile" --> shows Pratt maybe there is some justification for getting rid of them + weakens him.

C- irrelevant, we don't care about "most" animals here.

D- So what if those bats with the highest incidence of rabies don't live in buildings? That doesn't weaken Pratt, if anything it strengthens him.

E- Aware or not aware of being bitten or not... they still have rabies if the bat has rabies... if anything this might strengthen Pratt. Maybe if someone is more likely to be aware of having been bitten they would be more likely to get help quicker.. wrong choice.

[EmilyOwens]

I got this choice wrong by not fully understanding the implications of the choices and picking A.

In this question we are trying to weaken the argument that "there is little justification for health warnings that urge the removal of any bats residing in buildings where people work or live." (So maybe lets try to find a choice that will give us some (even a little) justification for removing bats where people work or live?!)

A- I initially chose this with the reasoning that maybe if its more likely to infect other bats than other animals all these building bats would be infecting each-other and then we would be left with a big problem of all these infected bats inside a building. This could maybe question the second half of the last sentence "...the overwhelming majority of bats do not have rabies" , so I thought. Just because a rabid bat is much more likely to infect another bat than to infect any other type of animal .. doesn't necessarily mean its going around infecting a bunch of bats and it definitely does not mean that just because it is more LIKELY to infect another bat than a dog -lets say- that now a bunch of bats in the building will be infected .. maybe it is just 1 more thats infected.. maybe its none! This choice doesn't give us enough an answer which would weaken the idea that there is little justification for health warnings that urge the removal of any bats ...

B- Notice the strong wording of this choice. "Rabid bats are less mobile than other bats but are MUCH more aggressive." This is it. In our stimulus we have "Bats are shy animals that rarely bite..." this doesn't say RABID bats! Our answer choice is showing us that Rabid bats are much more aggressive actually. So much for being shy! Pratt is saying there is little justification for health warnings that urge the removal of ANY bats residing in buildings... what about these aggressive Rabid bats we just learned about from choice B?! Even them being less mobile would weaken Pratt's argument here- saying they are less mobile throws out the idea that maybe these bats will relocate somewhere else, and the people in the building won't have to deal with them. But, answer choice B is giving us Rabid bats are MUCH MORE aggressive + doesn't seem like they're going anywhere (while not for now at least), "less mobile" --> shows Pratt maybe there is some justification for getting rid of them + weakens him.

C- irrelevant, we don't care about "most" animals here.

D- So what if those bats with the highest incidence of rabies don't live in buildings? That doesn't weaken Pratt, if anything it strengthens him.

E- Aware or not aware of being bitten or not... they still have rabies if the bat has rabies... if anything this might strengthen Pratt. Maybe if someone is more likely to be aware of having been bitten they would be more likely to get help quicker.. wrong choice.

Shakin, I pass my LSAT hat to you! Great work.

[uncleschaeflit]

I can accept that (b) weakens more, but (c) also weakens. "Bats are shy animals that rarely bite" is half of the premise and we get to weaken this by saying, "Yea, but most animals that carry rabies are animals that rarely bite people. So you can't just take what is true about a species in general and apply it to the rabid portion of it."