LSAT 6 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q5

LR Question 5 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: The museum’s night security guard maintains that…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: The thieves must have gained entrance from below ground.

REASONING: The night guard maintains that the thieves did not enter from ground level or above.

ANALYSIS: The problem here is that the night guard could be wrong. A correct conclusion to this argument would have been something like “therefore the night guard must also maintain that they entered from below ground.”

The argument switches from what the night guard believes to be true to what is actually true.

___________

1. This is not necessarily a good argument. It could be the winner had the highest average score.
2. CORRECT. Here again we switch from the competitors belief to what is in fact true. It’s possible the competitors are wrong in claiming that the store did not make a profit or break even.
3. This is a bad argument because it ignores that there could be a higher number of unmarried women than unmarried men. But it’s entirely restricted to what the census claims and it doesn’t switch to what must be true in reality.
4. This is a bad argument, but for a different reason. The stimulus depended on switching from belief to fact. This only talks about fact.
5. This is a bad argument but only because it’s possible the policy is not to process late claims.

Recap: The question begins with “The museum’s night security guard maintains that”. It is a Flawed Parallel Reasoning question. Learn how to master LSAT Flawed Parallel questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.