December 2010 LSAT Section 3 Question 22

Drug company manager: Our newest product is just not selling. One way to save it would be a new marketing campaign. T...

shafieiava on May 15, 2020

Scope

I have a hard time seeing why the correct answer choice is right here because it seems to not directly effect the argument on the new product being discussed, so I eliminated it from consideration. For example, I eliminated answer choice E because what do the other products have to do with the new product, the product being discussed by the author? We are generally taught in this course to think in the relevant scope of the question/passage and the correct answer choice here seems to go beyond that scope. Can someone please explain why the correct answer choice is not out of scope here?

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SamA on May 17, 2020

Hello @shafieiava,

Remember that on strengthen and weaken questions, we are allowed to bring in new information. Each answer choice will provide something new that is not included in the stimulus. The "if true" in the question stem allows us to accept each answer choice.

I would encourage you to focus on the conclusion. In this case, the conclusion is the last statement: We should try the marketing campaign.

To weaken this argument, we should look for an answer choice that says, "We should not try the marketing campaign."

You did the right thing with answer choice E by asking, "Is this relevant? What does this have to to with the product in question?" It neither strengthens nor weakens the argument.

Let's look at answer choice D. I understand why you overlooked it. The stimulus never mentions cutbacks, nor does it mention existing marketing campaigns. However, D introduces negative consequences of the new marketing campaign. This effectively says, "Maybe we shouldn't try the marketing campaign," which weakens the conclusion. You should be concerned about the relevance of new information, but do not be afraid of new information altogether on strengthen/weaken questions.