#25 - Although wood-burning stoves are more efficient

[SherryZ]

HI there! Thank you for your time!

June 2001 LSAT, Sec 2 LR, Q11:

This is, again, a weaken question, which I am not good at

I chose B but the right answer is C. Could you explain why C can weaken but B cannot?

Also, could you tell me how to confront this type of question? What is your pre-phrase?

Thank you very much!


Sincerely,
Sherry

[Adam Tyson]

Sherry,

I'm confused - are you asking about Question 11, or about Question 25? It just so happens that they are both weaken questions, and the correct answer for both is answer C, so I couldn't be sure which one you were looking at! Please clarify, and then we'll see what we can do.

[Adam Tyson]

Ah, okay - I took another look and saw that Steve already answered you about Q11 in another post, so it must be Q25 you are asking about here.

In this question, the author tells us that wood burning stoves are "more dangerous" than open fireplaces. He then tells us about creosote deposits - wood burning stoves deposit more creosote than open fireplaces, and creosote is dangerous because it can clog a chimney and even cause a fire inside the chimney. That does sound dangerous!

To weaken this argument, we again need to identify and focus on the conclusion. That's in the opening sentence - he is trying to prove that wood burning stoves are more dangerous. Our prephrase could be as simple as "no they aren't", but since he did tell us one way that makes the stoves more dangerous, we might have a more powerful prephrase if we were to say "in some other way, fireplaces are more dangerous". Anything that shows fireplaces to be more dangerous than wood stoves will weaken the argument presented by the author here.

Answer C is the only one that presents fireplaces as being more dangerous - they pose a greater risk of severe accidents in the home. It's not about creosote at all - it's a totally different danger. That answer doesn't destroy the argument - creosote may still be the biggest danger out there - but it doesn't have to destroy it, it only has to weaken it, and it does that.

Answer B doesn't present a fireplace-related danger, which is what we really need here. Instead, it talks about creosote more generally, and it gives us information that could apply equally to stoves and fireplaces. That won't help us to undermine the claim that, of the two, stoves are more dangerous.

I hope that cleared things up!

[Arindom]

Hi
what about ans choice D which says that open fireplaces also produce a large amount of creosote residue? If both wood burning stoves and open fireplaces produce a large amount of creosote, then you can't say one (wood stove) is more efficient than the other, right?

Thanks.

- Arindom

[David Boyle]

Hi
what about ans choice D which says that open fireplaces also produce a large amount of creosote residue? If both wood burning stoves and open fireplaces produce a large amount of creosote, then you can't say one (wood stove) is more efficient than the other, right?

Thanks.

- Arindom

Hello Arindom,

Well, the problem may not be the amount of residue, but how it's deposited (or not). The stimulus gives a problem with the wood-burning stove, of cooler, slower air depositing more creosote in the chimney. So, even if open fireplaces have a lot of creosote, maybe it's quickly wafted out of the chimney by all the hot air, say, so that there's no real problem.

Hope this helps,
David

[Arindom]

Thanks, David. I was reflecting on this and came to the same conclusion in that - so what if there is a large amount of creosote produced by open fireplaces? perhaps its less than the total amount produced by wood-burning stoves.

- Arindom

[nlittle]

I think we may have bypassed the "residue" piece of answer choice D in prior discussion as I believe the creosote residue was intended to mean the same thing as creosote deposit, so I am not quite convinced that is why it is wrong. Rather, the crux of incorrectness for this answer choice was that it does not attack the comparative feature (more efficient, or more dangerous) within the conclusion. In order to attack this, we need an answer choice that is relative (wood-burning vs. open fireplace), as done in C.

Best luck,

Nick

[DlarehAtsok]

I think I am probably missing something here since I cannot discern between A,B, and C. A tells that if we get the most efficient wood-burning stove, it would probably be less dangerous than open fire. Drawbacks of A --> the stimulus does not refer explicitly the best stoves, but stoves in general. B can make sense given that wood stoves are more efficient and thus they would probably need to be used less often and thus produce less creosote. Drawbacks of B --> I am not sure whether this leap can be understood as common logic or requires new information that is not in the stimulus. C tells of another risk which is related to open fireplaces and thus balance the problem of creosote. Drawbacks of C --> It refers specifically homes, which might be automatically related to the presence of a chimney, but what about offices and so on? It seems a specification like A. Can you help?

Thanks!

[Eric Ockert]

The bottom line is that we KNOW that wood burning stoves deposit more creosote in chimneys than open fireplaces. Answer choice (A), even though it shows that the most efficient stoves produce less creosote than fireplaces, does not change the fact that stoves deposit more.

There is a similar problem with answer choice (B). This answer deals with the amount of creosote produced, which still leaves the fact that stoves deposit more creosote.

Answer choice (C) points to other aspects of stoves/fireplaces that may be dangerous. So, even though stoves are more dangerous with regards to creosote deposits in the chimney, they appear to be less dangerous with regard to incidents inside the home. Even though there may be other locations that use stoves/fireplaces that aren't homes, this fact would still weaken the argument.\

Hope that helps!

[kcho10]

Hello,

So is it safe to say that when an answer choice states a general fact like "wood-burning stoves are more efficient than open fireplaces" it is not referring to ALL wood-burning stoves, and is only talking about the wood-burning stoves in general?