#14 - Global Reference, Must Be True

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (A).

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[lsatstudent2]

Hi,

Why is C incorrect?

[Jeff Wren]

Answer C states that "gold coins salvaged from an old shipwreck should not be regarded as archaeologically significant cultural property if they can be used to fund the exploration and recovery of the shipwreck for scientific and cultural reasons."

There is no support for a claim this broad in Passage A. While Passage A discusses that the North American company will be allowed to sell the gold coins, that is only because the specific agreement between the company and the British government allows this. In other words, the British government owns the shipwreck and all of its contents (including the coins), but the British government will let the North American company keep and sell the coins in exchange for doing all of the recovery/salvaging work.

This does not mean that gold coins should never be regarded as archaeologically significant, that is up to the country who owns the shipwreck to decide and presumably would be based on the specific coins, facts, history, etc..

[ToddVanV]

But at the end of Passage A it states, " The agreement, however, draws a distinction between different classes of artifacts, recognizing that cultural items have greater archaeological value than coins, which it allows to help pay for the project."

This statement seems to really strongly imply answer C. How does it not? And what am I missing that mislead me to choosing C?

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Todd,

The problem with answer choice C is that, even though the agreement classifies gold coins that way, that agreement may not be the ideal way to classify such coins, and it may not be the right way to classify gold coins in a very different context. The "should" in answer choice C is an assertion that this is the right way to see all gold coins, period. Is the agreement doing things the ideal way or not? Is the agreement doing something that every other salvage of gold coins would or should do? The passage doesn't give us the basis to answer those questions. Be careful with that "should" language in answer choices, particularly when the answer is worded as broadly as answer choice C is (talking about "gold coins," period). Unless you have a strong basis in the stimulus or passage for saying that kind of opinion-oriented answer is the right (or best) way to do things, it won't be correct.

[Desperatenconfused]

I also answered C and I can see why it is wrong. However, I’m still stumped as to why the answer is A. Where u. The passage does it imply anything about an intervening time ?

[Luke Haqq]

Hi Desparatenconfused!

One can glean that there has been an intervening time from the first paragraph of this passage. For instance, note that the end of that paragraph indicates that the HMS Sussex sank in a storm in 1694. There's an intervening time because the top of the paragraph is talking about centuries later, from 1998 to 2001. Moreover, after this amount of time had passed, this paragraph still makes clear that the British government still owns the Sussex. Given that, we can infer that a "government's property rights in a ship that sank several centuries ago are not forfeited merely by their not having salvaged the ship during the intervening time."