LSAT 132 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q23

LR Question 23 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Consumer advocate: TMD, a pesticide used on peaches…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle

CONCLUSION: TMD hasn’t been shown to be acceptable.

REASONING: Some of the population eats far more peaches and thus far more TMD than the national average. We have no research on consumption of this level of TMD.

ANALYSIS: The advocate has shown that we don’t know if TMD is harmful to certain segments of the population. So we need a principle that says we shouldn’t do something unless we know it’s safe. Or that we shouldn’t do something that may harm a segment of the population.

___________

1. This sounds good, but look at what it’s concluding: be cautious in assessing a pesticide’s risk. That’s not what the advocate is recommending. She says we shouldn’t use TMD on peaches. That’s a different recommendation.
2. Nonsense. The sufficient condition here is knowing that a majority of the population is likely to ingest TMD. But the stimulus said a majority of the population doesn’t eat peaches.
   And the advocate didn’t say that TMD use is likely unacceptable. She said it is unacceptable.
3. CORRECT. You can draw this statement and its contrapositive:
   Acceptable ➞ intended purpose AND shown no harm
   Shown no harm OR intended purpose ➞ acceptable
   The advocate says we haven’t shown there is no harm to children. The contrapositive above shows that lets us conclude “not acceptable”.
4. The stimulus said that average doses are low and average doses have been proven to be safe. So this answer doesn’t tell us we have any special obligation to children. Besides, children were just an example. The main point was that some people eat more peaches than average. We should protect all of them, not just children.
5. The argument mentioned one “measure to protect the population from harm”: restricting pesticides. The stimulus never said this leads to a greater harm.

Recap: The question begins with “Consumer advocate: TMD, a pesticide”. It is a Principle question. To practice more Principle questions, have a look at the LSAT Questions by Type page.