LSAT 149 – Section 1 – Question 16

LSAT 149 - Section 1 - Question 16

December 2017

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Target time: 1:08

This is question data from the 7Sage LSAT Scorer. You can score your LSATs, track your results, and analyze your performance with pretty charts and vital statistics - all with a Free Account ← sign up in less than 10 seconds

Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT149 S1 Q16	+LR	Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw Conditional Reasoning +CondR	A 0% 126 B 1% 151 C 58% 165 D 15% 159 E 26% 158	149 159 169	+Harder	143.093 +SubsectionEasier

Fremont: Simpson is not a viable candidate for chief executive of Pod Oil because he has no background in the oil industry.

Galindo: I disagree. An oil industry background is no guarantee of success. Look no further than Pod Oil’s last chief executive, who had decades of oil industry experience but steered the company to the brink of bankruptcy.

Summarize Argument: Counter-Position

Galindo argues that Simpson’s lack of experience in the oil industry doesn’t disqualify him as a chief executive candidate. He offers two premises:
(1) Having a background in the oil industry doesn’t guarantee success.
(2) The last chief executive was unsuccessful despite their background in the oil industry.

Identify and Describe Flaw

This is the flaw of mistaking sufficiency for necessity. Fremont argues that having oil industry experience is a necessary condition for being a successful chief executive. Instead of arguing against this claim, Galindo argues that having an oil industry background isn’t a sufficient condition for a chief executive to be successful. Fremont never claimed that an oil background was sufficient, though—he just said it was necessary. Galindo doesn’t address Fremont’s actual argument, so his disagreement with Fremont is unsupported.

fails to justify its presumption that Fremont’s objection is based on personal bias

Galindo does not presume that Fremont’s objection is based on personal bias, so no such justification would be necessary.

fails to distinguish between relevant experience and irrelevant experience

It isn’t necessary for Galindo to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant experience, because both Fremont and Galindo limit their arguments to discussions of relevant experience (a background in the oil industry).

rests on a confusion between whether an attribute is necessary for success and whether that attribute is sufficient for success

This is the cookie-cutter flaw in Galindo’s argument. Fremont argues that an oil industry background is necessary for success; Galindo counters that such a background is not sufficient to ensure success. Galindo mistakes Fremont’s necessary condition for a sufficient condition.

bases a conclusion that an attribute is always irrelevant to success on evidence that it is sometimes irrelevant to success

Galindo does not conclude that an oil industry background is always irrelevant to success. He states that such a background does not necessarily guarantee success, but he doesn’t suggest that oil industry experience is always irrelevant to success.

presents only one instance of a phenomenon as the basis for a broad generalization about that phenomenon

Galindo’s example successfully proves that an oil industry background doesn’t guarantee success, so the efficacy of his example or the fact that he only offers one isn’t a flaw. Rather, the flaw is that the claim his example proves does not actually respond to Fremont’s argument.

LSAT 149 – Section 1 – Question 16

LSAT 149 - Section 1 - Question 16

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Take PrepTest

Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 149 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

Leave a Reply Cancel