LSAT 138 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q12

LR Question 12 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: The government has recently adopted a policy…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Publishing airline safety statistics will make the public less informed about airline safety.

REASONING: Airlines will be far less likely to give complete reports if those reports must be published.

ANALYSIS: This argument mixes up two things:

1. Completeness of airline statistics.
2. Amount of information available to the public.

The author never says what info the public will have in the absence of published stats. Maybe there will be no public information!

In that case, incomplete stats would increase the amount of public info – which is what the conclusion is about. The completeness of the reports wouldn’t be relevant: imperfect is better than nothing.

___________

1. CORRECT. See the analysis above. If reports aren’t published, the public may have no information. So incomplete reports are still better than nothing.
2. The argument wasn’t talking about “rights”. Instead, it was making a factual conclusion about how much information the public would have. “Rights” to that info aren’t relevant.
3. The author didn’t say this. “Impossible” is an insane standard. I.e. It would mean you couldn’t buy an airline’s info for $40 billion dollars. (Sorry, Bill Gates, even you aren’t rich enough.)
4. The argument isn’t about who should be responsible. It’s just a factual debate about which method would result in more public info.
5. Revenue is irrelevant. The author was just making a factual claim about which method would result in more public info.