LR Question 23 Explanation, by LSATHacks
QUESTION TEXT: Biologists found that off the northeast coast of…
QUESTION TYPE: Paradox
PARADOX: Plankton have declined 10%, and three fish species have started dying. Scientists think these two things are connected.
ANALYSIS: The correct answer must explain both situations and show that they are related.
The best explanation would provide a common cause for both phenomena, or provide a cause for one decline and show that it causes the other decline.
The right answer shows that a bacteria is attacking both the plankton and the fish.
___________
- The decline in population is recent. Waste dumping couldn’t explain the deaths if it’s been going on for a while.
- CORRECT. This new bacteria could account for the recent deaths in both plankton and fish, as it attacks both species. This answer shows that the phenomena are related.
- This explains the slight decline in plankton population. It doesn’t explain the massive drop in fish populations.
- This doesn’t explain the massive drop in fish populations, it just shows that plankton are contributing.
- This is very broad. The decline in populations is pretty specific: one type of plankton and three types of fish. The stimulus said other species in the ecosystem are unaffected.
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Are you sure this is a paradox problem? There isn’t really a paradox in the problem. I got this question correct immediately but was approaching the answer choices looking for something that proved there was a connection and, more importantly, showed why there was uncertainty around that connection. That’s not a paradox, that is just searching for another fact that explains why the EXACT relationship is unknown. Answer choice B shows that the exact relationship is unknown because on the one hand, the fish’s food source is declining, and on the other, they are being directly killed. So when you have a single factor both directly and indirectly causing a decline, it is very difficult to disentangle the two.
Bottom line, not sure what kind of problem this is but I don’t see a paradox and think the explanation might actually be misleading.
The LSAT Hacks “Paradox” question type also includes question stems that ask you to “help to explain” a set of findings. This is because in both clear “resolve the paradox” questions and “helps to explain” questions, you’re being asked to reconcile two facts with one explanation, even if those facts are not paradoxical.
This question isn’t asking you to show why there’s uncertainty around a connection. It’s asking you to explain the biologist’s findings. The findings are two facts related to the decline of aquatic populations, and (B) provides both an explanation for the first fact, as well as the second.
I picked B because I didn’t like that D because it didn’t in any way try to explain the (admittedly somewhat negligible) decline in Plankton, while B did.
But I definitely didn’t love B because in the passage it says that the whole reason for why the biologists believe that there is some sort of connection is because these fish species eat the Plankton.
In B the decline in the plankton and the fish species has nothing to do with one eating the other, there just happens to be a a bacteria/virus/disease that happens to target both of these things.
The thing that made me pick B definitively over D was the stem- “which on of the following, if true, would most explain the biologist’s findings?”
The stem never asked us to in any way justify the biologist’s thoughts or hypotheses- just explain the findings as best as you can.
That’s right. Our task is to find some explanation for the decline in both the P-plankton population and that of the different species of fish. The stimulus tells us that scientists hypothesize that there is “a connection” between the two, but we’re not asked to determine how one population decline affects another–rather, we’re trying to figure out why they’ve both declined.
I’m really not seeing how D doesn’t explain the findings. The fish are starving, that could easily explain a huge drop in the fish population and would be perfectly acceptable. Now that the fish are starving, they go out and eat a bunch of P-plankton (after all, they do sometimes eat them), and now there is a loss of the plankton population, which of course would contribute to more of a drop in the fish population (it’s one big cycle). Of course, we wouldn’t know what caused the original starvation in the first place, but that is irrelevant, we don’t need to know that to answer this.
The best part about D though is that it is an explanation that firmly establishes the death of the species. My biggest problem with B is that it doesn’t give any indication that the bacterial strain is even fatal. The fish and the plankton might be able to naturally fight it off. Also, even if it is fatal, can we just presume it would cause extraordinarily high death rates?
D makes us assume the fish eat the plankton, causing the plankton’s population decline. And the big problem, I guess, is that it says “the loss of P-plankton” as if it is occurring regardless of what happens to the fish. B makes us assume the bacteria is fatal, and somehow doesn’t affect any other species in the area. I just think it’s hard to pick a clear-cut winner.
The issue isn’t really explaining the plankton’s population decline. A 10% drop isn’t shocking. The real crux of this is that the biologists believe the drop in population is due to the plankton.
In your version and D’s version, the cause of the massive decline is something *other* than plankton. This doesn’t explain why biologists thought plankton were the cause.
I’m still not convinced. If we aren’t trying to explain the plankton’s decline, then D is even better. The fish were starving before, and whatever caused the plankton to drop 10% shrinks their foodsource even further, pushing a big part of the population to the brink.
This explains the biologist’s finding that both declines are connected, references the fact that the biologist’s speculation is based on the understanding of the fish’s feeding pattern.
B is weak for the reasons john stated.
To be clear, we do also want to explain the plankton’s decline. What I meant is it isn’t the biggest thing we need to explain. We need to explain in more detail why the decline in plankton is linked to the fish’s decline.
D doesn’t explain the plankton’s decline, nor even how much the plankton’s decline contributed to the death rate of the fish. The fish were already dying for a mysterious reason.
B is much better as it tightly shows why the plankton are declining and also links that directly to the fish’s decline.
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.
I think the real issue with D is the word “findings” in the question stem: The biologists have 2 “findings:” the death of the fish & death of the plankton; their “belief” is the connection between the 2. They did not “find” anything about the connection. D justifies their belief in the connection between fish and plankton, but the question is about their “findings,” not about their “belief.” B explains their 2 findings (death of fish & death of plankton)