#9 - A university study reported that between 1975 and 1983

[Curtis1992]

Hello Powerscore,

I am reviewing question 9 from the Logical Reasoning section from the June 2001 LSAT. I am a little perplexed as to why D is the credited response. If I could get an explanation why, that would be great.

Upon approaching the question, my prephrase was along the lines of, "it is incorrect to conclude that there is no need to look for further explanation just because there are two different methods. There is a reason to search further to see why the methods ended in two different results.

thanks
Curtis Thomas

[James Finch]

Hi Curtis,

Your prephrase is a negation of the stimulus's conclusion, rather than a statement of the flaw itself. So what it is the flaw? There isn't enough evidence given to support the conclusion, because we don't know and are not told that different methodologies always lead to different results, as the stimulus seems to assume.

In truth, we don't know what results different methodologies lead to. They could be the same, different, or even a combination of the two. To correctly answer this question, we need to recognize that this is the missing element to the argument. The only answer choice dealing with the connection between different methodologies and results is (D).

Hope this clears things up!

[lsatquestions]

Why is C wrong?

[Beth Hayden]

Hi LSAT,

The stimulus doesn't tell us anything about whether either study was "properly conducted." All we know is that there are two studies, which used two different methods, and lead to two different results. It's definitely possible that the reason they came out differently is because one was flawed, but we have no idea whether or not that is true. Maybe one study was done "properly" but is unreliable for other reasons (e.g., bad data, small or biased samples, etc.).

However, answer choice (D) is saying that it is possible to study something in two different ways and still get the same result, so the fact that there were two different methods doesn't necessarily explain why there were two different results. Answer choice (D) gets at a fatal flaw in the logic of the argument, which (C) doesn't do.

Hope that helps!
Beth

[Hyunuk Park]

Hello. I'm lost.
The author clearly states that the results of the two investigations were different (opposite).

Aren't we suppose to take the premises given by the author as unchallengable facts? Why would the answer be one that challenges the premise or assumption of the author?

Please correct my POV.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi Hyunuk!

Yes, the author states that the results were different. What is problematic is why the author of the stimulus reaches the conclusion that "there is no need to look further for an explanation of the difference in the studies' results."

Why does the author conclude this? That's given in the first part of that final sentence: the author reasons that "examination of the studies shows, however, that they used different methods of investigation." Why is that necessarily relevant? It's not immediately clear. Just because they used different methods of investigation doesn't mean they must come to different results. There's still a question as to why the university study found the length of workweeks increased while the government study found the length decreased. The argument is flawed because the author fails to account for the possibility that, even using different methods of investigation, they could have still arrived at the same results.

Finally, while you generally should take what a stimulus says to be true, this is a flaw question, so you know that something is suspect about it. This might be a flaw contained within the stimulus (e.g., one of the sentences could be an ad hominem fallacy), or something not contained in it (for instance, the author might have failed to consider a relevant possibility).