#10- Fishery officials are still considering options for

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True. The correct answer choice is (C)

In this example, officials at the fishery are considering how they might go about ridding their Lake
Davis of “razor toothed northern pike,” a species that could kill off the area’s populations of trout
and salmon if the pike spreads to an adjoining river system. Two options have already been ruled
out: draining the lake, and trying to spread species-specific disease to wipe out the pike. A different
approach was taken four years prior, when the lake was poisoned in an effort to get rid of the pike,
angering local residents, tainting the lake for months, and hurting local tourism.

The stimulus is followed by a Must Be True question, so the correct answer choice must pass
the Fact Test; it will be the only choice that can be confirmed by the information provided in the
stimulus.

Answer choice (A): The stimulus provides that when the lake was poisoned four years ago, the
tourism industry suffered, but nothing in the stimulus would preclude draining the lake from having
similar effects on the tourism economy. Since this choice fails the Fact Test, it should be ruled out of
contention.

Answer choice (B): Although the stimulus only specifies one occasion on which the poison approach
was taken, the author does not say whether or not that was the only such occasion, so this choice
cannot be confirmed by the information in the stimulus.

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice. The stimulus begins by saying that officials
at the fishery are “still” considering options for eliminating the pike. Since the pike is still an issue,
it seems that the poison approach, in addition to causing many new problems, was an ineffective
solution to the pike problem.

Answer choice (D): Four years ago, according to the stimulus, fishery officials opted to poison the
lake in an effort to get rid of the pike, but the author does not discuss whether any other options were
considered at the time.

Answer choice (E): The author says that if the pike were to slip into the adjoining river system, it
could threaten the local populations of salmon and trout. This is clearly a risk, and a basis for the
efforts to eradicate the razor toothed northern pike, but the author does not say that the salmon and
trout are essential to the regional economy. Since this choice cannot be confirmed by the information
provided by the author, it cannot be the right answer to this Must Be True question.

[eober]

Hi,

Is the poison mentioned here a pike-specific disease or a way to drain the lake?

[Nicholas Bruno]

Hi!

I am not sure actually! The stimulus does not mention any information that would give you a way to deduce either possibility.

That being said, I do not think it is relevant whether the poison is pike-specific. The poison could not have been successful since the pike is still threatening the lake. Thus, answer choice C is true.

I hope that helps!

[HowardQ]

Hi,
I see there wasn't a better than C, but I'm still not sure how are we able to support this position. The poison 4 years ago could have successfully treated the pike problem for that year at least. The problem then could be reintroduced through slipping or any other reasons.

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi Howard!

You are bringing up a very good point. Since the poisoning of the lake took place four years ago it seems like that is enough time for the northern pike to have been killed by the poison and then be replaced by a new population of northern pike. If this were the case, then the poison may have been temporarily successful in ridding the lake of the pike.

The quick answer is that the question stems tells us to find a statement that is "most strongly supported," not one that absolutely "must be true." In this case we are allowed to choose an answer that is almost but not 100% guaranteed to be true. The LSAC recognized that there may be a tiny amount of doubt, and so they told us to ignore that.

The longer answer is that there is no easy way to 100% disprove the possibility that a new population of pike reentered the lake after the initial infestation was eliminated. It is however very hard to make a good case for answer choice (C) for at least two reasons.

Firstly, we should look back at the language that the speaker uses in the stimulus. The speaker begins by discussing "Lake Davis's population of razor-toothed northern pike." Notice that the speaker thinks of the population as singular. It is not the case that the Lake has had multiple cases of pike infestation.

Furthermore, we are told that four years ago the town added poison to eliminate "the pike," not "an earlier infestation of pike." The definitive article "the" tells me that the speaker sees just one population of pike. If we are to take the speaker literally, then there is one continuous population of pike. If that is true, then the poison did not eliminate "the pike" from the lake.

Secondly, answer choice (C) states that the poison was "not successful in ridding the lake of the pike." If you do not think that this is true, then you would have to agree with the statement "the poison was successful in ridding the lake of the pike."

This is an odd statement to make about a reoccurring problem. If I put down cockroach poison, but find the bugs back in my house a few months later, I likely would not claim that the poison was successful. This is subjective, but I doubt most people would be happy with a pest poison that allows for re-infestation in a short amount of time, and I doubt many people would claim that it was successful in the first place.

Let us know if this helps!

[HowardQ]

Thanks, Francis,

I did overlook the fact that most support does not indicate absolute truth. The level of detail you digged into was amazing, I couldn't possibly have distinguished they meant the same population of pike fish.

[Leela]

I am confused why this is still a must be true question even though it's asking for answer that doesn't need to be 100% accurate.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Leela,

The "most strongly supported" language tells us that we are almost certainly looking for something that must be true. In terms of categorization of question types, we consider it a must be true question because we know we are relying on the stimulus to tell us what answer choice has to follow. However, you are also correct that very occasionally, the phrasing in this question stem does mean that we are looking for an answer choice that may not be true 100 percent of the time. We have a really good blog post that touches on this idea here.

Hope that helps!
Rachael

[Adam354]

What confused me here was "if it slips into the river system."

However, it does make sense. If it would have said "slips in from the river system" then I would have entertained the assumption that pike were in the river, but not in the lake.

[Robert Carroll]

Adam354,

The pike are in the lake and there is a fear they might get to the river. Because there is a still a debate about how to get rid of them from the lake, there must still be (at least) there.

Robert Carroll