Logical Reasoning

PT147 · S1 · Q18 A large survey of scientists

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

Save & drill this skill — build targeted practice sets from questions like this one
Video walkthroughs — watch every question solved step by step
81 official LSATs — as questions, timed sections & full-length tests

A large survey of scientists found that almost all accept Wang's Law, and almost all know the results of the Brown-Eisler Experiment.

Conclusion (Therefore)

Most of the scientists surveyed reject the Minsk Hypothesis (MH).

Evidence

Most of the scientists surveyed accept Wang's Law (WL), and most of the scientists surveyed know the results of the Brown-Eisler Experiment (BEE).

But if you combine BEE with WL, it contradicts MH.

Evaluate

This seems like a pretty reasonable argument, so I would switch into Find an Objection mode, because I don't see any gap at first: If you accept X and you know Y, and you know that X + Y means that Z is wrong, then don't you believe that Z is wrong?

Given that these scientists accept Wang's, and they know the results of B-E, and that Wang's and B-E would collectively contradict Minsk, How could we argue that these scientists do not reject Minsk?

There is a language switch from "most of them accept Wang's" to "most of them know the results of B-E". Did we switch verbs because these scientists don't necessarily accept the B-E results?

I guess scientists could be aware of results, they could know what B-E reports to have found, without accepting that those results are valid.

And then the other wiggle room is that this argument never established that these scientists know that Wang + B-E contradicts Minsk.

We can say that . Furthermore, "Clark Kent is really Superman!"

Does that prove that

Nope. We know Lois works next to Lex Luther's killer, but we can't assume that she knows that because we don't know whether Lois knows that Clark Kent is Superman.

Goal

We spotted two weak points - we need to establish that the scientists accept the results of the B-E experiment (not just that they've heard about the results), and - we need to establish that the scientists are aware that combining the B-E results with Wang's Law would contradict Minsk.

18.

The argument requires assuming which one of the following?

Correct
The scientists surveyed are generally
Why this is right
If we were to negate this, we'd be saying that "most of the scientists surveyed aren't aware that combining B-E with Wang's would contradict Minsk". That's a huge objection to the argument. If these scientists know 1 and know 2, but they don't know that 1 + 2 = 3, then we can't conclude that they know 3.
Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
67% picked this
The scientists in the survey
Too Strong: exactly
The argument doesn't need there to be a 100% match between the two groups. The author just needs there to be enough scientists who end up in both groups (know B-E / accept Wang's) that it still adds up to more than 50% of the scientists surveyed. If we negate this, we're just saying "there is either at least one scientist who knows the B-E results but doesn't know Wang's or vice versa". Since we were told "almost all" of them accept Wang and know B-E, we're really saying something more like, "90% of them accept Wang's, and 91% of them know the B-E results". Even if those two groups don't perfectly overlap, there's still enough overlap for the author to think that more than 50% of the scientists are showing up in both of those groups.
27% picked this
Almost all of the scientists
Out of Scope: how obtained
The argument only needs these scientists to know of and accept the results of the B-E experiment. She doesn't need the scientists to also know the backstory of how those results were obtained. If we negated this and said, "no, it's not almost all of them ... only about 65% of them are familiar with how the results were obtained", it wouldn't change anything about the argument.
2% picked this
The sample is large enough
Out of Scope: representative
If the conclusion had said "Therefore, most scientists", then, yes, the argument would be assuming that the scientists surveyed were representative of scientists overall. But the conclusion is only talking about the scientists surveyed, so there is no sampling assumption being made, because there is no "extrapolation to a bigger group" happening in the conclusion.
2% picked this
Wang's Law has in fact
Out of Scope: reality vs. belief
This argument is only about what scientists believe / accept / reject. The argument isn't changed one way or the other by any of the underlying concepts being true or false in reality. This is purely about arguing, "Given these two separate beliefs these scientists hold, and given the connection between these beliefs implies a third belief, these scientists must hold that third belief."
3% picked this

Continue the review in LSAT Lab

Save this question, watch the video walkthrough, and drill similar questions in your LSAT Lab account.

Save and practice this skill

LSAT Lab

Turn this review into a targeted study plan.

Save this question, drill more like it, watch the video walkthrough, and track your progress in your LSAT Lab account.

Start practicing free