#3 - Must Be True, Except, Author's Perspective

[reop6780]

... I was destroyed with this section.. (Is it just me or the reading in Dec.1994 was difficult....:"(( )

#3, is the question "cannot be true" type?

I thought "cannot be true" question should be also supported by reading in that "could be true" can be literally anything.

How do I confirm that answer B cannot be true?
(in other words, Couldn't it be true?)

[Ron Gore]

Hi, Reop! Thanks for your question.

It appears your difficulty here was not in understanding the passage so much as in understanding the task in the question stem. This is a Must Be True - Except question. I know it can be confusing, but the capitalized "LEAST" in an LSAT question stem signals that the question is the equivalent of an Except question. (Since I know that you have the Logical Reasoning Bible, I'll simply point you to pages 59-63 for a complete discussion of this idea.)

In a Must Be True - Except question, the correct answer choice is not something that Cannot Be True. Rather, it is something that is Not Necessarily True. Not Necessarily True is very similar to Could Be True, with differences at the extremes. Specifically, if you are looking at a scale of 0-100, with 0 being always false and 100 being always true, then Not Necessarily True occupies the range of 0-99 while Could Be True occupies the range of 1-100.

In your question, you stated that you thought answer choice (B) is something that could be true. Avoiding the term "could be true" in order to avoid confusion with the question type, you are absolutely correct that the statement in answer choice (B) is not something that the author necessarily thinks is important in future research on neurogensis in humans, and therefore is the correct answer.

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Thanks,

Ron

[reop6780]

I appreciate your citation on pages in LR bibles. I reviewed the pages, and it helped me a lot!

Thank you!

[PresidentLSAT]

Hello it,s me, again lol

For this question, I want to be sure I eliminated for the right reasons.

The support for other choices were in the last paragraph, except A which comprised of the entire passage. I almost picked it as my answer because I couldn't find a specific line reference

I thought B was reasonably supported because the author was making the argument that a larger brain size would have been a different story for this bird. It seemed relevant in examining it in humans; maybe our brain size isn't that big to accommodate everything so early on. It's the word "ratio" didn't scare me off. The only reason I reluctantly settled on it was because humans don't fly.

Another reason I picked B was because the brain size in accommodating the bird was discussed in a totally different paragraph. The case the author makes in the application for studies in humans is in part 4. Then again, it's still the same passage.

I also picked it because while discussing it, its function in the passage offers an explanation of the bird's neurology.-why they don't develop everything early on.

My questions are (though silly lol):

-Can we confidently pick an answer even if there's no specific line reference, yet the passage supports it?
-In the case of B where brain size was discussed as a contributing factor BUT NOT in relation to future studies, can I reasonably ignore it because its function in the passage doesn't support reasonable studies?

Many thanks

[Robert Carroll]

Pres,

If the passage supports the answer, it shouldn't make a difference as long as the answer answers the question.

The passage says that canaries may have neurogenesis in part because the requirements of flight force them to minimize brain size so as to be light enough for flight. The only information we have about the ratio of brain weight to body weight deals with a specific feature of canaries that humans can't possibly have, so answer choice (B) has no basis in the passage.

Robert Carroll