#5 - Attorneys for a criminal defendant charged that the

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Method of Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (A)

Attorneys for a client accuse the government of a cover-up, and the government replies that there is no evidence to support the client.

The government's ludicrous reply is entirely consistent with a cover-up, and you are asked to evaluate the government's reply, so you should focus on the fact that the government does absolutely nothing to satisfactorily address the attorneys' allegations.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. Since the government does not satisfactorily address the allegations, it leaves the question open.

Answer choice (B) The government establishes little in its response.

Answer choice (C) The government's denial cannot demonstrate a person's state of mind.

Answer choice (D) The government's assertion is consistent with three major possibilities: cover-up; integrity; incompetence. Those alone demonstrate that the government did not necessarily fail to search for evidence, since the government could search and destroy, or search and not find.

Answer choice (E) If it is true that there is no evidence to support the client, it is still possible that the evidence existed once and was destroyed, so the truth of the government's claim would in no way establish that there was not a cover-up.

[egarcia193]

I got this one wrong I had A left as a contender but I think the horrible response by the government just confused me on what I was supposed to do since every answer choice either strengthen weakened or pointed out a flaw, and the fact that the correct answer not only pointed out the method of the argument but the flaw in it as well I think got me as I'm not used to seeing flaws arguments as strong as this on method are their ways when you have a really flawed argument in method questions to not lose your place especially when the answer choices seem all over the place?

[Francis O'Rourke]

Most arguments presented in the logical reasoning section of the LSAT are flawed in some way. Whenever you recognize that a speaker's argument is dreadfully flawed, such as this one, you should anticipate that the correct answer will likely describe a flawed reasoning. Don't try to work around the flaw; focus on it and use it to identify the correct answer.

[lunsandy]

Hi Powerscore,

I am quite confused what this question is asking me to do. The qs stem appears to a Evaluation question but this is part of the Method of Reasoning Drill? (L7-66 Qs. 26)

I chose B because I thought that because the gov. replied that there is no evidence that support the defendant case then what the attorney was saying was an exaggeration about the evidence that would have supported the defendant.

I see how there is a flaw in the gov's response that simply claims no evidence would even support the defendant and ultimately does not answer attorney's issue of the government destroying evidence.

I am mostly just confused with what my task for this question.

Thanks a lot!

[Adam Tyson]

Hey lunsandy, thanks for asking. A true Evaluate question asks you to evaluate an argument, usually by asking a question, the answer to which will help determine whether the argument is sound or not. The reason we can be certain that this is NOT an Evaluate question of that type is that there is not argument here to evaluate! All we have are two claims, one of which is a response to the other.

Start your analysis here by asking yourself what you think of the government's response. Did it deal with the charge made by the attorney? Was it helpful? You probably recognized quickly that it was a lousy response, more of an evasion, because it did nothing to deny the charge made by the attorney. Sure, there isn't any evidence, but was there some previously that has now been destroyed?

Seeing that flaw in the response should lead you to a decent prephrase here, maybe something like "the response is inadequate" or "the response fails to answer the question". We can also call this a Method of Reasoning question, because we are being asked, essentially, what the response did, or how it fit into the overall discussion. Admittedly, it's a weird one, but it fits into that category better than to any other, perhaps, except maybe the Flaw category (and those two are frequently related - Method questions usually deal with pointing out flaws).

The problem with answer B is that the response doesn't establish (meaning prove) anything! It leaves open the question about what happened, and there is no reason to believe that the government is telling the truth or, if they are being truthful, whether that is the whole truth. The stem never told us to accept what either party said as true, right?

An oddball question, for sure!

[LSAT2018]

Is this sort of like an Error in the Evidence where the government says there is no evidence to try show that the attorney's claim is false? But in evaluating this reply, it does no such thing?

[Adam Tyson]

It is very much like that, LSAT2018! While this isn't a Flaw question, exactly, since there is no argument, that does describe a problem with the response.

[Adeline]

Hi!

I have read through the posts above, but I am still a bit confused about answer choice A.

I chose E over A because I thought that although the government's response was pretty lousy, they were eliminating the possibility that the evidence might exist at the very first place. It is saying that there is no evidence at all (no evidence that would even tend to support). Thus I thought that if this statement is true that there is no evidence in the first place, then it could disprove the charge that the government had destroyed it. aka if there is no evidence, how can they destroy it? That's why I chose E.
I thought that if the government's response is put in a different way, like: "we did not find any evidence", then it leaves open the question of whether they had destroyed it.

Could you help me with this?
Thank you very much!

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Adeline!

This is a matter of proper interpretation of the language of the government's reply. The government's reply states, "[T]here is no evidence that would even tend to support the defendant in the case." The "is" is present tense, and it is to be interpreted as the government stating, "There is currently (i.e., at the present time) no evidence." Even if that reply is true, there is still the possibility that there was evidence in the past that the government destroyed. Since that possibility is live, answer choice E is inaccurate. Even if it were true that there is no evidence at present, that would not effectively disprove the claim that the government destroyed it at some time in the past.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[Adeline]

Hi Jeremy,
I understand it now. Thanks for your explanation!