LR Question 18 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Police captain: The chief of police has indicated that…
QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning
CONCLUSION: There is no graft in my department.
REASONING: I know that one form of graft doesn’t exist. (Gifts over $100)
ANALYSIS: Your instinct may have been to think that the police captain is wrong about the lack of gifts. But that would be too obvious, and it’s not a typical type of LSAT flaw. Answers almost never contract the author.
The real flaw is that the police chief described one type of graft: gifts over $100.
But “graft” is a broad term. The definition is:
“practices, esp. bribery, used to secure illicit gains in politics or business; corruption”
You could, for example, accept a job later in return for corrupt services now. That’s a form of graft, and it wouldn’t fall under the $100 gift definition.
___________
- A limited sample would be something like “I asked Bob and Jane and they hadn’t taken gifts”.
The police captain was talking about her entire precinct, so the sample is 100% of the precinct. - CORRECT. If there are other types of graft, then it’s possible there’s graft in the precinct even if the captain is right about the lack of gifts.
- This isn’t a flaw, and it didn’t happen in the argument.
Example of this: They claim that Jill robbed the bank. This seems probable, since Jill has always talked about how banks are bad and how she wants money. Jill has a history of robbery. - This didn’t happen.
Example of flaw: We’ve proven there’s no graft. Therefore, no one in the department has ever done any other bad thing. - This almost never happens. It takes gross stupidity to contradict your own argument.
Example of flaw: I bribed one of my officers to spy on the department to see if there was corruption. He reported no one took bribes. So there are no bribes in my department.
More Resources for Flaw Questions
- Flaw drills: Use these to practice making examples of abstract flaws.
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Flaw questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers flaw questions.
My problem with this is:
“… count as gift.” This is a definition.
“… ever taken SUCH gifts…” This is a direct reference to the previous definition, and covers the entire definition completely.
My understanding is that this eliminates other possibilities.
Therefore, I was naturally going to the same way of thinking as Akiyah did.
The line is that “gifts of cash or objects… count as graft.” So when the police captain says “I know with certainty, that no one has ever taken such gifts” he’s referring only to gifts of cash or objects – the flaw is that there are other forms of graft besides just these gifts of cash or objects. Gifts of experiences, like a baseball game, or other preferential treatment like helping an officers child get into a college they’re not qualified for could also count as graft. Just because his officers aren’t guilty of one type of graft doesn’t mean they’re not guilty of another type of graft.
-Reply from LSAT Tutor, Morgan Barrett
Does getting the right answer to the question, to some extent, rely on the test-taker having background knowledge of what graft entails? I can imagine that quite a few people don’t encounter the word “graft” in everyday use, and would justifiably assume that the police chief’s definition of graft is all-encompassing.
Of course, you could argue that all test-takers ought to have this sort of background knowledge, but my question is whether one needs to have it to answer the question properly, not whether they should.
Good question, yes and no. Yes, to properly do this question you need to be using *the* definition of graft used, and the LSAT expects you to be able to follow along. Any word that’s in the dictionary is fair game, and the more words you know precisely, the easier the LSAT is.
That said, the LSAT also often leaves ways to figure out the definition. For example:
Should police officers receive gifts? Probably not, that’s usually considered bribery. The captain’s argument reinforces this, as they deny their department has received such gifts. Therefore, we can infer that that police captain views the gifts as bad. And hence, if gifts are graft, and the gifts are bad, then graft is bad. Graft is some larger category that includes receiving gifts or cash when you shouldn’t.
Which sounds a lot like bribery. So, I think the passage has all the info to know that the police captain is defending their department against bribery accusations. Hope that helps! The best way to do this question is just to know the word graft. But if you don’t, then you have to do the work to figure it out logically from context.
>and would justifiably assume that the police chief’s definition of graft is all-encompassing.
Not sure what you mean here though. Most English words have many definitions, so I’m not sure what would be a fair assumption. Graft has at least 6-7 distinct definitions. Faced with this uncertainty, you have to look at what the word seems to mean in context.
Isn’t this a perception vs reality flaw? The Chief stated that knows “for certainty” that x didn’t occur and then concludes that x didn’t occur. But believing isn’t the same as it actually being factual hence she cant come to that conclusion based off her beliefs?
No, this isn’t a belief vs. fact flaw. The LSAT tends to give deference to relevant authorities. Here, it’s reasonable to defer to the police chief’s knowledge of their precinct.
Note that if there were NO other flaws, then you could perhaps cite that as a flaw. But assuming the chief isn’t corrupt, and that they’re competent, it’s not hard to imagine they could actually know something like that.
So, an appeal to authority flaw? Use flawed logic to determine the flaw in the argument. This question is extremely irritating.
Not every appeal to authority is a flaw! Much of our society is based on the idea that relevant experts and authorities can be relied upon for facts. Our whole system would break down if we presumed everyone was wrong all the time.
LSAC is on record as stating we should be deferential to relevant experts:
https://lsathacks.com/lsac-responses/
The flaw is B is substantially worse than perception vs reality. EVEN if the police captain is 100% correct in their premises, their argument is still wrong. That’s a true logical flaw, rather than jumping to “they must be wrong or lying”. Certainly they could be mistaken but focussing on that to ignore a major flaw it itself a flaw.
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.