LSAT 156 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q15

LR Question 15 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Historian: Scholars writing histories of an era’s …

QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen

CONCLUSION: Business histories probably overestimate the successes of past businesses.

REASONING: Historians tend to study successful firms more than unsuccessful ones.

ANALYSIS: The argument is about selection bias. If historians look more at successful firms, then their accounts will skew toward success.

To strengthen, you want to show that historians are even less likely to study unsuccessful firms than we might think. The stronger the imbalance, the more likely the historical record is biased toward success.

So the best support will show that unsuccessful firms are underrepresented in the available evidence or harder to study. That makes the bias problem worse and strengthens the conclusion.

___________

1. This says it’s hard to figure out why businesses failed, but historians could still study them—it doesn’t directly show they are underrepresented.
2. This introduces cultural assumptions, which is a different kind of bias, not the success/failure imbalance.
3. This compares types of records but doesn’t say anything about successful vs unsuccessful firms being studied more.
4. CORRECT. If records of failed businesses are destroyed more often, then historians will disproportionately study successful ones, strengthening the bias argument.
5. This is about historians’ training, which doesn’t affect whether they overrepresent successful firms.