#7 - The fishing industry cannot currently be relied upon to

[Anali]

Hi!

Can someone explain why answer choice (C) is better than (E)? I kept (C) as a contender but thought it did not strengthen the argument as much, as it appears to be more of a restatement of what is in the stimulus.

Thank you

[Adam Tyson]

The conclusion that we need to strengthen here, Anali, is that the government should institute a program to analyze tissue samples. The evidence for this claim is that if they do so, the fishing industry will be motivated to help, while they would be motivated NOT to help if the government instead just asked them to count the birds caught in their nets.

To strengthen the claim that the government should institute this program, it would help if there was no other way for them to get the info they want about the birds. That's where answer C comes in - it tells us that the government needs the fishing industry to help, one way or another. If that were not the case - if they didn't need the fishing industry's help - then why bother with the program that motivates them to help? Just go count the birds some other way, and to heck with those fishing industry folks, right?

Answer E does nothing to add to the claim that the government should institute the new program. Instead, it suggests a possible alternative to that program - simply restrict net fishing to make the industry cough up the data! That doesn't help support the idea of the new program, and may even hurt it some.

Focus on that conclusion, and make it better or more likely to be true. That's the path to finding the best prephrase and the best answer.

Keep at it!

[EmilyLSAT22]

Hello, thanks for the explanation as to why C is the correct answer. I was led to select D. I understand why C is correct, but why is D wrong? Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

Thanks for asking, Emily! The reason why D does not strengthen the argument is that it does not give any support to the claim that the government should institute the program. It tells us what one effect of such a program might be, if certain information was discovered, but that doesn't tell us that they should actually institute the program. Do we want to restrict net fishing? I can't tell that from the stimulus. I only know that our author wants to get an accurate count of the birds, and he thinks the program that tests for toxins would be the right way to make that happen. D gives us no additional reason to believe that the government should be testing for toxins, but only tells us what would happen if they found some.

If your reaction to the answer is "Oh, okay, then we should probably institute that program!", you have a strengthen. If, however, your reaction to an answer is "Okay, so what? Is that good? I'm not sure." then the answer does not strengthen the argument. Speaking for myself, the latter is how I reacted to answer D. Let us know if you saw it differently!

[EmilyLSAT22]

Hi, Adam that makes things a lot more clear - thank you! I think my problem was that I did not successfully identify the conclusion, so I was not sure what it was exactly that I was trying to strengthen.

[LSAT2018]

I noticed the conditional 'unless' in the answer (C) and would like to ask, in what instances does the strengthen answer have 100 percent relationships, that is conditional, such as this one?

[Malila Robinson]

Hi LSAT2018,
Absolute answers that such as this one are helpful in strengthen questions to rule out a weakness in the argument which would be that there might be some other way to do the thing the argument talks about. If we are strengthening the argument by saying what is stated in the argument is the *only* way to do something then we have gotten rid of the weakness and helped the argument.
Hope that helps!
-Malila

[whardy21]

I chose A. Can you please explain why answer A is incorrect.

[Adam Tyson]

Interesting choice, whardy21! My first reaction to A was that it might actually weaken the argument, because the fishing industry might not get very comprehensive information from the testing and thus be less interested in the results. They would only know about some species of fish, not all. Then I thought, so what? They still might want that partial info, so that doesn't hurt.

So why doesn't it strengthen the argument that the government should institute this tissue sampling program? Because it is completely irrelevant to it. What does the specific diet of the birds have to do with whether the government, which wants to count the birds, ought to use this program in order to get the industry to help them? Nothing.

Plug answer A into the stimulus as an additional premise, and ask yourself whether you are any more convinced that the government ought to implement the proposed program. What good does it do? Let us know your thoughts on that, if you like, and we'll see where you may be going wrong.