#9 - A university study reported that between 1975 and 1983

[Curtis1992]

Hello Powerscore,

I am reviewing question 9 from the Logical Reasoning section from the June 2001 LSAT. I am a little perplexed as to why D is the credited response. If I could get an explanation why, that would be great.

Upon approaching the question, my prephrase was along the lines of, "it is incorrect to conclude that there is no need to look for further explanation just because there are two different methods. There is a reason to search further to see why the methods ended in two different results.

thanks
Curtis Thomas

[James Finch]

Hi Curtis,

Your prephrase is a negation of the stimulus's conclusion, rather than a statement of the flaw itself. So what it is the flaw? There isn't enough evidence given to support the conclusion, because we don't know and are not told that different methodologies always lead to different results, as the stimulus seems to assume.

In truth, we don't know what results different methodologies lead to. They could be the same, different, or even a combination of the two. To correctly answer this question, we need to recognize that this is the missing element to the argument. The only answer choice dealing with the connection between different methodologies and results is (D).

Hope this clears things up!

[lsatquestions]

Why is C wrong?

[Beth Hayden]

Hi LSAT,

The stimulus doesn't tell us anything about whether either study was "properly conducted." All we know is that there are two studies, which used two different methods, and lead to two different results. It's definitely possible that the reason they came out differently is because one was flawed, but we have no idea whether or not that is true. Maybe one study was done "properly" but is unreliable for other reasons (e.g., bad data, small or biased samples, etc.).

However, answer choice (D) is saying that it is possible to study something in two different ways and still get the same result, so the fact that there were two different methods doesn't necessarily explain why there were two different results. Answer choice (D) gets at a fatal flaw in the logic of the argument, which (C) doesn't do.

Hope that helps!
Beth