LSAT 117 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q11

LR Question 11 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: It is easy to see that the board of directors …

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: The board is corrupt and should be replaced.

REASONING: People on Wagston’s (a board member) staff committed bribery.

ANALYSIS: The reasoning is about Wagston’s staff. But he’s only one board member.

We don’t know how many board members there are in total. There’s always multiple.

Even if every allegation about Wagston’s staff is true, we know nothing about the other board members, their staffs, or whether corruption extends beyond Wagston’s circle.

It’s a flawed generalization from evidence about one board member’s staff to the entire board.

___________

1. CORRECT. The argument never shows that corruption extends beyond Wagston’s staff. Evidence about one part of the organization doesn’t justify concluding that the entire board is corrupt and should be replaced.
2. The type of bribery is irrelevant. Any bribery would still be evidence of corruption.
3. The relationship between bribery and corruption is obvious and not the flaw. Bribery is a form of corruption.
4. If you chose this, you might have read the stimulus wrong. The stimulus only says “various persons” on Wagston’s staff. So it doesn’t say all of them. But whether it was 10% or 100% of Wagston’s staff, that’s still not justified to conclude something about the entire board.
5. This is not an ad hominem. The argument uses alleged bribery as substantive evidence of corruption, not as a way of avoiding the issue.