#12 - Several recent studies establish that most people

[lichenfarmer]

I may be thinking too much about this, but I chose A because the conclusion stated that "several" studies established this link, but not ALL. I took the use of "several" to mean that there exists some studies that corroborate this conclusion, but this doesn't tell me that the majority share similar views. Since the author is basing their conclusion on these select several studies, it seemed to me that a different recent study that contradicted it wouldn't matter as much.

I do understand why C is correct though. I may have glanced too quickly over it during my first run.

[atierney]

Hello,

So, for this question, we are looking for the one answer choice that does not weaken the argument. So, if you can understand why C would not weaken the conclusion, you would be faced with a dilemma as to how to decide between A and C. They both would apparently not weaken the argument!

However, hopefully it's relatively clear that even if the author looked at 5 studies out of the 500 that were available, that addition of another that cuts against those five would certainly weaken the overall weight of the five taken together, especially, if only a little, with respect to the population of surveys as a whole. 5/500 is still greater than 5/501. Thus, answer choice A would indeed weaken the argument.

[LSAT student]

I am not sure why (D) weakens the argument. Are there any "logic tricks" that can be used to rule this out?

[Adam Tyson]

lichenfarmer: One way to weaken an argument based on surveys, studies, or experiments is to say that another survey, study, or experiment gave conflicting data. This doesn't prove that the original conclusion is wrong, but it should at least raise some doubt in our minds about the original conclusion, and that element of doubt is enough to weaken the argument. I think that should also address atierney's response, which is accurate.

LSAT Student: Another classic way to weaken an argument that is based on a survey is to raise the spectre of biased, suggestive, or confusing questions. If the questions suggested something about what reasonable people might say, that could bias the way people answer it. Survey questions shouldn't ever suggest anything - they should be neutral! So this answer choice, if true, would make the results of the survey questionable because of the possible influence of how the questions were phrased.

Imagine the question was worded like this: "If you had a serious illness, would you, like most reasonable people, want to be told about it?" Doesn't that question tell the respondent that the correct answer - the reasonable one - is "yes, I would want to be told"? And since it tells the respondent that there is a correct answer, it could spoil the data and make conclusions based on that data unreliable. Hence, that answer, if true, weakens the argument.