LSAT 134 – Section 1 – Question 19

LSAT 134 - Section 1 - Question 19

October 2011

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT134 S1 Q19
+LR
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Conditional Reasoning +CondR
A
6%
157
B
5%
159
C
87%
165
D
2%
156
E
0%
153
137
146
155
 +Medium 147.067 +SubsectionMedium

Court analyst: Courts should not allow the use of DNA tests in criminal cases. There exists considerable controversy among scientific experts about how reliable these tests are. Unless there is widespread agreement in the scientific community about how reliable a certain test is, it is unreasonable for the courts to allow evidence based on that test.

Summarize Argument
The court analyst concludes that courts should not allow DNA tests as evidence in criminal cases. The analyst supports this with the principle that if there isn’t widespread scientific agreement about how reliable a test is, then it is unreasonable to allow that test as evidence. And the reliability of DNA tests is controversial among scientists.

Identify and Describe Flaw
The analyst poses a rule for when courts should allow certain evidence, and then claims that DNA tests fail this rule due to controversy about their reliability. This assumes that any controversy about a test’s reliability is incompatible with widespread agreement about that test’s reliability. However, it’s possible that there is a widespread agreement that DNA tests are reliable at least to a certain threshold, despite controversy about their exact reliability past that point.

A
courts have the authority to admit or exclude any evidence irrespective of what experts have to say about its reliability
The fact that courts have the authority to admit or exclude evidence is irrelevant to an argument about whether or not they should admit certain evidence.
B
the standard against which evidence in a criminal case is measured should not be absolute certainty
The analyst never claims nor implies that the standard of evidence in a criminal case should be absolute certainty. The analyst’s proposed standard for scientific tests is “widespread agreement in the scientific community.”
C
experts may agree that the tests are highly reliable while disagreeing about exactly how reliable they are
The analyst assumes that because DNA tests’ reliability is controversial, that must mean there’s no widespread agreement. But if there’s agreement that they are very reliable, and controversy only about the exact reliability, that assumption no longer makes sense.
D
data should not be admitted as evidence in a court of law without scientific witnesses having agreed about how reliable they are
The use of scientific witnesses is irrelevant to this argument, which focuses on the opinions of the general scientific community as a standard.
E
there are also controversies about reliability of evidence in noncriminal cases
Whether or not evidence can be controversial in noncriminal cases is irrelevant to whether DNA tests meet the analyst’s proposed standard for criminal cases.

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LSAT PrepTest 134 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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