This is a weakening question: Which one of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the conclusion above?
Our stimulus begins by telling us that surgery was restricted to emergencies only following a relatively high mortality rate in area hospitals. Sounds like a smart decision! It seems the plan worked, and deaths fell by almost a third during the period of restriction. Unfortunately however, when non-emergency surgeries were allowed to resume, the death rate rose again. From all of this the argument concludes that the risks of elective (i.e non-emergency) surgery had been often unnecessarily incurred in the area. In other words, people were risking their lives in surgeries that they didn’t really need. We should notice that although our support does give us good evidence that people were dying, we haven’t established whether or not these risks were necessary. We are assuming that just because a surgery wasn’t an emergency, well then it wasn’t a necessary risk. Our job on this question is to weaken this conclusion that the deaths were due to unnecessary surgeries. Let’s see what our answers have to offer:
Correct Answer Choice (A) This weakens the conclusion by assigning a reason for the elective surgeries which would make possible mortality a necessary risk even if the surgery wasn’t an outright emergency. Sure these weren’t car accident victims who were going to immediately die without surgical intervention, but every day they delayed the surgery their chances of surviving just got worse; it was necessary to perform the surgeries sooner rather than later.
Answer Choice (B) The conclusion is that the risks were incurred unnecessarily, not unknowingly.
Answer Choice (C) This would if anything strengthen the argument by suggesting the surgeries were being unnecessarily performed.
Answer Choice (D) It is entirely consistent for elective surgeries to be, in general, less risky than emergency surgeries, and for hospitals in the area to be incurring unnecessary risks performing said surgeries.
Answer Choice (E) This doesn’t address the argument, it just distinguishes surgery failure from surgery mortality.
This is a weakening question, indicated by: Which one of the following, if true, undermines the conclusion concerning words for colors?
The stimulus begins with the fact that many languages have distinct words for the brother of your mother and the brother of your father, while in English both are referred to as “uncle”. The next sentence concludes that this is evidence of a more finely discriminated kinship system than that of English speakers. Basically, those cultures care more about the minutia of family than English-speaking cultures. We then get another premise, informing us that basic words for colors vary between languages, followed by another conclusion that speakers of languages with fewer words for color must be unable to distinguish as many colors as speakers of English. What a bad argument! The reasoning however is pretty clear; both arguments infer that a difference in language reflects a difference in reality. We’re specifically told which of the conclusion we are to weaken in the question stem, so we should look for an answer choice which would make the color conclusion significantly less likely to be true. Let’s see our options:
Correct Answer Choice (A) This gives us a case where one group is able to distinguish colors but only has one word, directly weakening the argument’s reasoning that number of words and distinguished colors are one to one.
Answer Choice (B) This is completely consistent with the conclusion being true.
Answer Choice (C) This seems to suggest they do distinguish colors differently from English speakers; while unripe bananas are green, I haven’t seen many blue leaves!
Answer Choice (D) This adds nothing.
Answer Choice (E) This is completely consistent with the conclusion being true.
This is a flaw/descriptive-weakening question and we know this because of the question stem: The reasoning above is flawed because it...
The argument starts out by giving us a reason for why typed passwords are a security risk because they’re easy to guess or steal. There is a new system that relies on voice authentication and in a trial, we’re told that the system never gave access to someone who wasn’t supposed to have access; in other words, it kept unauthorized users out. The argument concludes that if this result above can be repeated, then there will be a way to give access to authorized people and no one else.
This kind of error pops up now and again on the LSAT. It’s basically a confusing granting access and refusing access, and how many times it does each correct. In other words, if the system denies someone who isn’t supposed to have access every single time, that doesn’t mean that the system grants access to the people who are allowed access.
Answer Choice (A) is not descriptively accurate because the comparison is not faulty. The author says that typed passwords can be taken, but someone’s voice can’t be stolen. This is out.
Answer Choice (B) is trying to be a sample size flaw - and while it is descriptively accurate, it’s not a flaw. How big does the sample size need to be for this “general” conclusion, assuming that the conclusion that “voice recognition will work” is a general conclusion in the first place.
Answer Choice (C) is descriptively accurate but it’s not a flaw. It’s just additional information on the usefulness of this feature.
Correct Answer Choice (D) is descriptively accurate and it is the flaw. While you’re not giving access to unauthorized users, what about the accuracy of giving access to people who are authorized? We need to know this latter statistic before we make the conclusion.
Answer Choice (E) is not descriptively accurate; there is nothing to suggest that the conclusion is “heavily” qualified in any way.