LSAT 159 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q14

LR Question 14 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Environmentalist: The adoption of genetically engineered crops …

QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Justify

CONCLUSION: New genetically engineered crops should be thoroughly tested for safety before we use them.

REASONING: Loose monitoring poses significant risks to ecosystems. This happened once with a GMO crop that could harm monarch butterflies.

ANALYSIS: This question is straightforward in what it asks. It wants you to prove that:

1. If you are making a new GMO product
2. You must test it first

That’s it. The principle doesn’t say anything about the test results or any other factor. It’s just if you release a new product, test first. And above all we need a rule which tells us “therefore, you should test”.

If the answer doesn’t tell you “run a test”, it is not right. You don’t need to think about anything else. These answers are cluttered with distraction to steer you away from the simple task.

The conclusion is simple: every new genetically engineered crop must be tested for safety before production.

There’s a few things to keep track of.

The environmentalist says ANY new GE crop requires testing. That means the argument is not distinguishing between potentially risky or safe crops.

The implicit assumption is that every GE crop carries at least some potential risk, due to fast adoption and loose monitoring.

The environmentalist also doesn’t make any claims about what happens after testing. There’s nothing stating whether unsafe crops should be banned.

So, the principle we’re looking for must do two things:

1. Require testing for GE crops BEFORE production
2. Treat all GE crops as posing potential risk

___________

1. Look carefully at the last line of the stimulus. It does not say “rigorous testing…should be required…and the crop should be banned if risky.”
    
   The answer just says you need to test, it doesn’t say you need to ban. If you think about it, there are plenty of things which are risky which we use. If we banned everything that could be risky, we’d ban cars and water.
    
   It is absolutely vital to doublecheck that an answer actually matches what was said, rather than merely resembling what was said.
2. The environmentalist wants testing for all GE crops, so this undermines the conclusion by creating an exception the environmentalist doesn’t allow.
3. CORRECT. This follows the environmentalist’s argument: all GE crops must be tested before production. The first sentence links GE crops to risk, because of how rapidly things are moving.
    
   The word unless makes this answer harder. As an “if”, this answer means: “If risk potential, then test safety before allowing”.
4. Here, testing happens after production. That doesn’t align with the stimulus, which says we must test before putting a crop into production.
5. We don’t know anything about what should happen after the testing is done.