LSAT 65, Logical Reasoning II, Q22, LSATHacks

LR Question 22 Explanation, by LSATHacks

QUESTION TEXT: Scientist: Physicists claim that their system of…

QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen

CONCLUSION: Physicists should copy biologists and increase anti-fraud protections.

REASONING: Physicists say that physics is protected from fraud by peer review. Biologists once said they were protected from fraud, but they weren’t. But now biology increased its protections against fraud.

ANALYSIS: Don’t get fooled by the question stem. This is a strengthen question, not a most strongly supported question. You’re supposed to support the conclusion. There are a couple of problems with this argument:

1. We don’t know why biology faced fraud. Maybe their peer review system wasn’t very effective. Physics might have a better peer review system.
2. We don’t know that fraud is bad for physics. The argument concludes that reducing fraud will help physics, but it doesn’t give any evidence that fraud will set physics back.

Be careful in how you use outside knowledge. You can use it to generate hypotheses. Maybe fraud is bad. It seems like it should be. But you can’t use outside knowledge to prove anything. You can suspect fraud is bad, but you can’t assume it unless the argument says so. 

___________

1. CORRECT. This says fraud is bad. Making this explicit strengthens the argument. If fraud isn’t bad, then how will reducing it help physics?
2. This shows that biology adopted an effective system. It doesn’t show that physics will benefit from increased fraud protection.
3. This very slightly weakens the argument, by showing that fraud can’t be eliminated. But this doesn’t really impact anything. The stimulus didn’t say we have to eliminate fraud entirely.
4. This weakens the argument. Physics today is better protected than biology used to be. Maybe more protections are unnecessary.
5. This weakens the argument, slightly. Based on past evidence, physics is already protected against fraud.

Hi, I'm Graeme Blake

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