Letter to the editor: Your article was unjustified in criticizing environmentalists for claiming that more wolves on ...

shunhe on March 25, 2020

Hi @Yuer-Wang,

Thanks for the question! Let’s take a look at the structure of the argument. We’re told that an article is unjustified in criticizing environmentalists for making a claim about more wolves being killed than born. Why? Because the article stated that it was disproved by recent studies saying the wolf population was stable. But the article didn’t take into account the fact that environmentalists have been introducing new wolves.

We can see that everything in the paragraph goes towards supporting the first sentence: the article is unjustified in criticizing environmentalists. Here’s how we can think about it in a premise-conclusion form:

Premise: Article said wolf population is stable
Premise: Article ignored fact that environmentalists introduced new wolves
Conclusion: Article unjustified in criticizing environmentalists for saying that more wolves are killed than born

Now note that the question asks us specifically about the conclusion of the argument. (A) is certainly a true fact stated in the argument. (A), however, is a premise, and not a conclusion, and so cannot be the right answer. The LSAT will often try to trick you on these kinds of questions by making premises answer choices alongside the actual conclusions. It’s important to maintain the distinction between the two. Conclusions will be supported by other statements in the passage and will be the “point” of the author writing the passage. Premises will support other statements and be unsupported themselves.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any further questions that you might have.