#12 - Purebred dogs are prone to genetically determined

[cardinal2017]

So the argument structure that I analyzed on the stim is the following:

P: Purebred dogs are prone to genetically determined abnormalities (GDA) and so raising those dogs will cost a lot.

C: It is better to buy nonpurebreds in order to reduce the risk of the possible/likely costs to cover the GDA issues.

Initially, I chose (C) as an answer because I thought that shorter life span of the purebred would make it less likely that the dog will incur as much cost as expected -

On the other hand, (E) also seems plausible in that it deals some blow to the stimulus's conclusion as even if you buy nonpurebreds that rarely have GDA, it doesn't guarantee GDA-free descendants and so even GDA-free dogs will incur much in the end. Put another way, the cost will essentially be the same as you choose purebreds.

(A) seemed completely incorrect when solving the problem since I assumed that the GDA does affect dogs' well-being and should be corrected by surgery. This flow of thinking came from that the stimulus was written as if GDA is something that is so serious as to use surgery to be corrected. On top of that, the stimulus was written as GDA is something that is "suffered" from by dogs, which is sufficient to confuse readers and make them think that it is a "disease," not some genetic characteristics that do not certainly and always take effect.

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After assuming (A) is the correct answer, now I can see that the stimulus suggest "it "can" be corrected" while it may not have to be. Also, it is assumed by the stim that just the proneness itself imply higher risk of incurring "medical bills" to purebred dogs' owners.

Granted, the purebred dogs are GDA-prone and they might have contracted some disease. However, even if the dogs' GDA can be corrected by the costly medical bills or surgery,
owners might not have to count on such costly surgery but alternative medicine (whoa) since the stim didn't say surgery is the "only" possible way of correcting the abnormalities. So just GDA itself does not necessarily lead to costly medical bills. (even if you assume GDA is some kind of a disease.)

Also, even if they are prone, they might not necessarily have problems from such abnormalities and so the owners don't necessarily risk high costs from medical bills.

Two hypotheticals examined and one of the two can be used to deal a blow at the argument in question.

And the latter scenario might be paralleled to (A), I think.

Please leave a feedback since I would like to know if this logic can work.

[Steven Palmer]

Hi cardinal2017,

You're correct in your reasoning! The biggest thing to note here, as you did, is that these GDA "can" be corrected, but it is never mentioned that there is any real reason to have them corrected. (A) is correct because it removes any need for surgery, meaning owners will not have high bills if they get a purebred dog.

Your original logic on (C) would likely be considered going beyond the scope of the stimulus. You want to watch yourself and not assume anything beyond what you know, so we can't say that a shorter lifespan would mean fewer costs.

Answer choice (E) does not have anything to do with the conclusion. We care about the dogs a potential owner would pick now, we don't know that that owner is going to raise any puppies or anything like that.

Hope this helps!
Steven

[Toby]

Hello!

I find that sometimes I struggle with determining a good prephrase for Weaken questions, which I think is one of the main reasons that I missed this question. I originally selected letter E here because the prephrase that I created was "credited answer will weaken conclusion by showing that nonpurebred dogs could incur similarly costly medical bills." As I was answering this question, I thought that letter E could explain that nonpurebred dogs may have puppies that have genetically determined abnormalities, so nonpurebred dogs could have costly medical bills. After reviewing this question, I understand now that "A dog that does not have genetically determined abnormalities" does not necessarily mean that the dog is a nonpurebred. I think my main error was conflating these ideas.

Would someone mind helping me come up with a better prephrase for this question and offer some tips on how to create good prephrases for Weaken questions in general? Thank you so much for the help!

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi Toby,

That's one part of a prephrase. What your prephrase does is equate the costs of owning purebred and non-purebred dogs. You may have gone wrong in two ways though.

1. Focus on what your expected answer is doing, and don't get tied to any one specific idea or phrase that you think will need to appear in the answer. You may have been looking for 'similarly costly' or 'similarly expensive' while all that we needed to do was show a similar cost in the end for these two.
2. when we want to weaken a conclusion by equating the cost, or value, or amount, etc... of two quantities, we can accomplish this either by raising the cost (value, amount, etc...) of one of the quantities or lowering the cost of the other. You seem to have seen the former approach, but you were not aware that we could have accomplished the same effect by indicating that purebreds are not necessarily very expensive to take care of.

[Toby]

Thanks for the tips on prephrasing, Francis. Very helpful!

[akanshachandra]

I dont understand why B is wrong. By saying that both purebred or nonbred dogs are subject to the same diseases, shows that both are prone to going to the doctor, which could cost a lot of money, therefore disproving that nonpurebreds are the best option.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi akanshachandra,

You're right to note that if (B) were true ("All dogs, whether purebred or nonpurebred, are subject to the same common nongenetically determined diseases"), it would seem to suggest that purebred and non-purebred would both incur the same medical costs.

However, what (B) is saying is that they incur the same medical costs as a threshold. But we still need to take the information in the stimulus as also true--purebreds have the additional cost of surgery to correct for genetically determined diseases, on top of the medical costs for nongentically determined diseases that non-purebreds incur as well.

What (A) is doing ("Most genetically determined abnormalities in dogs do not seriously affect a dog's general well-being") is exposing a weakness in the way the stimulus brings up "suffering" ("Since nonpurebred dogs rarely suffer from genetically determined abnormalities,..."). The stimulus is pointing out that purebreds are more expensive because corrective surgery is expensive, but if (A) were true, it would suggest that surgery would most of the time be unnecessary. It would therefore weaken the argument that non-purebreds are better because one incurs less costly medical bills; rather, (A) is suggesting most of the time one would not incur such bills with purebreds.

[OneSeventy2019]

Powerscore,

I had a hard time accepting Choice A as the correct response (although, I eventually did through POE). My primary issue was that I felt LSAC was having us make an assumption not stated in the prompt. I diagrammed the argument as follows (during the test, in my head; then afterwards explicitly on paper):

p1: Purebreds more likely to have GDA / P GDA
p2: GDA can be corrected by surgery (not a sufficient / necessary relationship)
p3: Surgery is expensive / S $
p4: non-purebreds less likely to have GDA / /P /GDA
c: if want to avoid medical bills (expensive surgery) then choose non-purebred

When doing the the test (and during review) I contended that the LSAT is forcing us to assume that "if GDA affects well-being, then is corrected by surgery" (GDA S).This assumption makes sense, after all, what type of person wouldn't want the best for their dog. That being said, one could imagine a world where many people don't care enough about their pets to get corrective surgery even if they can and even if the surgery would change the well-being of their animal for the better. Also, IF we assume that p2 is in fact a necessary/sufficient relationship and that GDA implies corrective surgery then I still am not seeing how the concept of wellbeing affects the chain of events? The stimulus didn't mention anything about owners putting their pets through corrective surgery because it affected their wellbeing. Maybe we live in a world where most corrective surgeries are cosmetic and most owners don't want to have a malformed dog because it would hurt their reputation?

What am I missing here? Am I just overthinking this.

Thanks in advance, your responses help a ton!

[James Finch]

Hi OneSeventy,

This question hinges on precise reading. There is an assumption that "abnormalities" need to be corrected by expensive surgery; in order to weaken the argument, we need to attack that assumption by bringing in a counter-premise. But genetic abnormalities aren't necessarily harmful; having green eyes or red hair is a genetic abnormality, but while easily changeable nobody would suggest that these things need to be "corrected" because these abnormalities aren't harmful. Similarly, purebred dogs that have very short noses, stubby tails or heterochromatic eyes would generally be prized for these abnormal attributes, rather than seen as liabilities that would require surgical correction. (A) explicitly says this, making it the correct answer choice.

Hope this helps!

[lawlandmem]

Hello,

I understand why B, the answer I chose is incorrect (since it doesn't address the added liability of the cost of genetically determined abnormalities in purebred dogs), however can someone explain the problem with the following thought process: When I was reading the answer choices for this particular question, I thought A was a solid contender. However I thought that even if it doesn't seriously affect a dog's general well-being, it could still be costly since there is still a chance that it could require surgery for xyz reasons (lifestyle came to mind at the time). Thanks!