September 2017 LSAT Section 4 Question 22

Newspaper: Increases in produce prices apparently have led to an increase in the planting of personal gardens. The tw...

chelseaborg on September 5, 2019

Why is D wrong?

Hello. I narrowed it down to D and E but I chose E thinking that it was an alternative explanation for the increase in the number of personal gardens. Could you please explain why this one is wrong and why E is right?

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shunhe on December 22, 2019

Hi @chelseaborg,

Skylar has a detailed explanation of why (E) is right on another thread on this question posted by Ryan, but to summarize, E weakens the argument by presenting an alternative explanation for seed sale increases. If another large retail seed company goes out of business, the two largest seed companies would gain new sales from that as customers move from that now-defunct company to the big players. This doesn't, however, entail an increase in the number of people buying.

(D) is incorrect because an economic downturn is out of the scope of the question. (D) itself does not claim that an economic downturn actually happened, and an economic downturn is not mentioned in the stimulus at all. Hope this helps.