LSAT 145 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q12

LR Question 12 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Several movie critics have claimed that this movie…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: The critics’ conclusion is wrong.

REASONING: The critics’ evidence is wrong.

ANALYSIS: This question raises an important distinction: you can be right, even if your evidence is wrong.

For example, suppose I argue that because the moon is made of green cheese, water is wet. Oops, I made a silly argument. But water is still wet, right? I can’t make something true untrue just by making a stupid argument for it.

So, the movie critics may still be right that the movie will cause people to behave irresponsibly. It’s true that the survey was flawed, but the critics might be right for other reasons.

___________

1. CORRECT. This matches. The author showed that the critics had no evidence. She therefore argues that the critics’ conclusion was wrong. But a conclusion can be right even if we currently lack evidence for it.
2. The reputational harm was just there to distract you, it wasn’t central to the argument.
   Also, this was irrelevant. The author didn’t think the claim was true, so there was no reason to consider the reputational harm of a true claim.
3. The author isn’t relying on statistical data herself: she just said the survey was flawed. So there’s no sample to speak of.
4. This is an ad hominem answer. It didn’t happen.
   Example of flaw: The critics dress badly and smell like sewage.
5. This gets the right answer backwards. The actual flaw was failing to consider that a conclusion might be true even if the evidence is false.