#20 - Agricultural scientist: Wild apples are considerably

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (B)

Here, the agricultural scientist addresses the question of when apples were first cultivated in a
particular region. The scientist’s focus is on the size of apple remains discovered by archaeologists.
Wild apples are much smaller than the cultivated apples one would find in a supermarket.
Archeologists have found apple remains dating from about 5,000 years ago, about when people first
started cultivating fruit. The remains appear to be from fruit that would be the same size as the wild
apples that are native to the region. Based on this evidence, the scientist concludes that “apples were
probably not cultivated in this region 5,000 years ago.”

In reaching this conclusion, the scientist has made an error that appears frequently on the LSAT. The
scientist thinks that the remains found by archaeologists are from wild apples because they are the
same size as wild apples, which the author appears to assume are the same size now as they were
5,000 years ago. The scientist further assumes that just like cultivated apples today are much larger
than wild apples, apples cultivated 5,000 years ago would be larger than wild apples. But there is no
evidence to support this assumption of continuity over time. It may very well be the case that 5,000
years ago cultivated apples were the same size as wild apples.

This is a Flaw question. Our prephrase is that the correct answer choice will describe the scientist’s
assumption that because modern cultivated apples are larger than modern wild apples, then apples
cultivated 5,000 years ago must have been larger than wild apples 5,000 years ago.

Answer choice (A): While it is true that the scientist does not address the possibility that apples
were cultivated in other regions, that possibility is irrelevant to the conclusion, which was focused
specifically on whether apples in one particular region were cultivated 5,000 years ago.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice, because it addresses the author’s assumption
that the relationship between the size of cultivated apples and the size of wild apples would not have
changed over time.

Answer choice (C): When an answer choice to a Flaw question says that the argument takes
something for granted, it means that the argument has assumed that thing to be the case. This answer
choice is saying that the argument assumes “that all apples are either the size of wild apples or the
size of cultivated apples now found in supermarkets.” However, the conclusion did not address all
apples or say that there could not be an apple that is neither the size of a wild apple nor the size of
cultivated apples now found in supermarkets. So, this answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (D): This answer choice describes an internally contradictory argument. However,
this argument was not internally contradictory, meaning it did not have premises that opposed each
other or the conclusion.

Answer choice (E): Here, the answer choice describes a circular argument. But in this case the
argument’s premises and conclusion were not the same.

[ccampise]

Just wondering why C can't be the right answer? It seems like the scientist could be taking the apple sizes for granted?

[David Boyle]

Just wondering why C can't be the right answer? It seems like the scientist could be taking the apple sizes for granted?

Hello ccampise,

No, the scientist does not assume that the world has only two types of apple sizes. Maybe he or she assumes that there are 10 zillion sizes of apple. Answer B is better than answer C, since B explains why a cultivated apple might be little differently sized from a wild one.

Hope this helps,
David

[LustingFor!L]

So, I immediately crossed off B as a contender... I thought the conclusion in the question stem was "apples were probably not cultivated in that region 5,000 years ago". So I decided that it couldn't be B, because it said "for only a short time"and 5,000 years is not a short amount of time?

I picked A, but I can see that it's kind of irrelevant and not describing the flaw in reasoning.

[Kristina Moen]

Hi LustingFor!L,

You're absolutely correct that the conclusion to this argument is "So apples were probably not cultivated in this region 5,000 years ago."

Here's the three premises with some key parts underlined:
1. Wild apples are considerably smaller than cultivated apples found in supermarkets.
2. In one particular region, archaeologists have looked for remains of cultivated apples dating from 5,000 years ago, around the time people first started cultivating fruit.
3. The only remains of apples that archaeologists have found from this period [5,000 years ago] are from fruits the same size as the wild apples native to the region.

We are literally comparing apples to apples... except it's more like apples to oranges! The author compares wild apples to cultivated apples found in supermarkets. But then the author bases his conclusion on the remains of 5,000-year-old apples, which was around the time people first started cultivating fruit.

Answer Choice (B) is correct because a 5,000-year-old apple could have been cultivated, but it could still be the same size as its wild counterpart because it hasn't been cultivated for a very long time yet.

Answer Choice (A) is incorrect because the evidence is about apples in a specific region, and the conclusion is also about that specific region. If the evidence was about a specific region, but the conclusion was about the larger region (say, evidence of apples in Washington led the author to make a conclusion about apples in the United States), then that answer choice would be correct.

[graceli17]

Hi,

I'm confused as to what "short time" and "long time" means in answer B. Does long time refer for 5,000 years?

Thanks!

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, Graceli,

Good question. In effect, long time does refer to 5,000 years in a sense. Answer choice (B) makes a distinction between what to expect in plants that have only begun to be cultivated versus what to expect in plants that have been cultivated for an extended period of time.

In this argument, this idea works as follows:

• Present day cultivated apples are much bigger than present day wild apples.
  Remains of apples from 5,000 years ago indicate that all such apples are small. There is no difference in size.
  The author argues that the fact that there's no difference in size among these remains from 5,000 years ago indicates that apples were not cultivated at that time.

This argument involves a kind of anachronistic fallacy that just because something is true today it must have also been true in the past.

Answer choice (B) describes this problem by introducing the consideration that at that time (5,000 years ago), there might not have been an appreciable difference in the size of wild and cultivated apples.

Thus, apples cultivated for a short time (cultivation had only begun 5,000 years ago) might more closely resemble the size of contemporaneous wild apples (5,000 years ago).

In contrast, apples cultivated for a long time (present day apples) might differ greatly from present day wild apples.

I hope this helps!

[pavalos5777]

Hello,

The stimulus provides that "archaeologists have looked for remains of cultivated apples dating from 5000 years ago..."

Answer choice B refers to "plants that have been cultivated for only a short time/long time..."

If the archaeologists found "remains" then how could the apples from 5000 years ago be considered as "plants that have been cultivated for a long time"? It seems that this answer choice regards their existence 5000 years ago as their period of cultivation. This is an extremely questionable choice in language, unless of course I am misunderstanding the language.

I correctly identified the anachronistic fallacy in this argument, but the language of answer choice B ultimately pushed me toward my second contender (answer choice C).

Can you please clarify the language in answer choice B?

Much appreciated,
Pierre

P.S. This practice exam (June 2014--my 11th practice exam) resulted in my worst LR performance (section 2 of the exam), I feel that this section particularly relied upon very dubious language in the answer choices; while I am accustomed to filter for convoluted language at this point in my preparation, this section seemed to really stretch the meaning of words in their application. Is there any way I can fortify my susceptibility to these tactics? Thanks again.

[AthenaDalton]

Hi pavalos,

Thanks for your question!

The scientist says that archaeologists looked for remains of apples from 5,000 years ago, "around the time people first started cultivating fruit." The scientist doesn't give us any reason to know that fruit cultivation began 5,000 years ago, but since this is the LSAT we have to take him at his word and trust that he's correct to say that fruit cultivation really did start about 5,000 years ago.

If fruit has only been cultivated for 5,000 years, then we can safely say that a 5,000 year period of cultivation for apples is a long time -- at the very least, that's the longest amount of time that any fruit in existence has been cultivated! The scientist is getting at the fact that apples may have changed after 5,000 years of selective cultivation to bring out the best traits in the fruit. But apples that had only been cultivated for 10 years may bear a very strong resemblance to their wild counterparts.

Just to be sure we're on the same page here, let's assume that apple cultivation began in the year 3000 BC. Archaeologists find apples that date back to the year 2990 BC, decide that they look a lot like wild apples, and conclude that they must not have been cultivated. They could be incorrect in their assumption, because 10 years worth of cultivating apples isn't going to be enough to transform a wild apple into a Red Delicious apple.

The issue with answer choice (C) is that it doesn't accurately describe the scientist's argument. The scientist argues that since the apples found 5,000 years ago look a lot like wild apples, they were probably not the result of intentional cultivation. He stops short of claiming that there are only two types of apple sizes in the world -- cultivated and wild apples. The sheer number of different apples at the supermarket show that there's more than one size in existence, and the scientist doesn't claim otherwise.

I hope that helps clarify things -- good luck studying!

Athena Dalton

[pavalos5777]

Thanks Athena, it does help, I misunderstood the language.