#17 - Science teacher: In any nation, a flourishing national

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

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

This stimulus provides a fact set containing three conditional statements that we can chain together. First, the science teacher tells us that a flourishing national scientific community is necessary for a successful economy. We can diagram this relationship as:

SE = successful economy
FNSC = flourishing national scientific community

Sufficient Necessary

SE FNSC

Next, we are told that in order to have a flourishing national scientific community, it must be the case that many young people become excited enough about science that they resolve to become professional scientists:

MYPE = many young people become excited enough about science that they resolve to become scientists


FNSC MYPE

Finally, the teacher tells us that to have that excitement among many young people, it must be the case that there is good communication between scientists and the public:

GCSP = good communication between scientists and the public

MYPE GCSP

Combining these three relationships across the common terms FNSC and MYPE produces this conditional chain:

SE FNSC MYPE GCSP

The question stem identifies this as a Must Be True question. The correct answer choice will focus on the conditional chain described above, testing on any portion of the chain or on its contrapositive.

Answer choice (A): This answer choice is incorrect for two reasons. First, the stimulus discussed the need for good communication between scientists and the public, not just communication. Next, this choice treats communication between scientists and the public as sufficient for young people becoming excited about science, while the stimulus identified such communication as necessary for young people to become excited about science.

Answer choice (B): This answer choice elaborates on the relationship presented in the second sentence of the stimulus. It is true that in order to have a flourishing national scientific community, it must be the case that many young people become excited enough about science that they resolve to become professional scientists. But, we were not told that the extent to which the scientific community flourishes depends principally on the number of excited young people.

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice, because it restates an additive inference we learned from the conditional chain. Using the Unless Equation, in which the term modified by the word “unless” becomes the necessary condition and the remainder of the sentence is negated and becomes the sufficient condition, we can diagram this answer choice as:

Sufficient Necessary

SE GSCP

Answer choice (D): The stimulus provided that many young people must be excited about science. This answer choice changes that fact to say that most of the young people must be excited about science.

Answer choice (E): We were told that good communication between scientists and the public is necessary to spark many young people to become excited enough about science that they resolve to become professional scientists. This answer choice impermissibly expands on that idea to say that good communication is required for any scientific endeavor.

[srcline@noctrl.edu]

Hello,

I'm having trouble understanding the logic and linking of conditionals in this stimulus. So I diagrammed this as:

successful natl. econ flourish natl. science community

community to flourish young ppl. resolve to be prof. scientists

excitement good communication b/w scientists and public.

I picked answer choice A. Not sure how to link these to get to answer choice C. I don't see how the word unless figures into the original diagram as per the stimulus.

Thankyou
Sarah

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi Sarah,

Your diagramming is good; the problem you're having here is that you missed the connection between your Necessary term in the second line and your Sufficient term in the third line. Where you have "young ppl. resolve to be prof. scientists," you might change it to "young people are excited enough." You could also then change excitement in the third line of diagramming to "young people are excited enough;" we know it's the same, because that last sentence of the stimulus says "that excitement," which is referring us back to the sentence before.

With that in mind, try to create a chain, and then go back to the answer choices again. Now can you make that connection?

[deck1134]

Hi PowerScore,

Odd question. I picked (B) for this after eliminating everything but (C) and (B). It does seem that the word "principally" is implied by the language: a community "requires" that young people be excited. If they aren't, then there simply won't be a national scientific community flourishing. Isn't that the same thing as "Dependending principally?" If I took a stone that bears 33% of a building's weight out from the foundation, the building will fall, even if it isn't removing a majority (or principal amount) of support.

What am I missing here?

[Adam Tyson]

We know that a flourishing community requires that many young people be excited, but we don't know that that is the principle requirement, Deck. It could be one of many requirements, and perhaps even a fairly minor one!

Also, is it all about the number, or just that there be "many," whatever that means? If 10 is "many," allowing for some amount of flourishing to occur, will 20 mean that the country flourishes more? Is there a direct, proportional relationship required here? I don't think so - it's just "if flourish, then many excited young people." Once we cross the "many" threshold, the extent of flourishing might be unaffected by the number, but by other factors.

Mainly, when the stimulus is so completely conditional, you should be looking for a conditional answer like C, rather than one about relative importance like B.

[Mr.OinkTown]

Looked at answer C and decided to not go with it due to the wording in the answer. The "unless at some point scientist have communicated well with the public" threw me off. I was under the impression from the phrase "Good communication between scientists and the public is necessary to spark that excitement". I assumed that to meant continuous communication. Because if the scientist communicate with a certain age demographic, then stop, sure the demographic would be excited, which would lead to them becoming scientist, but what about the age demographics below the one I just listed for example that are too young to understand. How would they be excited ?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Mr. Town,

Yes, it looks like you were thrown off by the verb tense of the answer choice.

It may be helpful to think of it this way:

If good communication between scientists and the public is necessary for a successful economy (which is an inference that can be made by linking the conditional statements in the stimulus together),

Then it would be true to say that:

A nation cannot have a successful economy without having good communication between scientists and the public at some point.

(The above statement is logically equivalent to Answer C.)

The wording "at some point' doesn't imply that it happens once and is finished, just that it needs to at least happen at some point. The opposite of something happening "at some point" is that it never happens. If good communication between scientists and the public never happens, then a nation cannot have a successful economy according to the stimulus.

Also, "good communication between scientists and the public" is a separate term than "many young children being excited" and these should not be considered the same group of people. Even though the good communication is necessary to spark the excitement in the young people, it doesn't necessarily have to do so by directly communicating to them. For example, simply creating a general awareness of/appreciation for science in the general public could indirectly spark the excitement in young people. Presumably, it simply means that scientists periodically communicate with the general public, perhaps by doing interviews on the news, etc..

Don't worry too much about the underlying "real world" logic of how this communication would work as it is not necessary to answer the question. The conditional statements on the LSAT often make no sense in the "real world." The key to doing these questions is to correctly identify the conditional reasoning, diagram the terms, link them to create a chain when possible, and then make any inferences.