The report released by the interior ministry states that within the past 5 years the national land reclamation progra...
Claudia-FrankelJune 2, 2020
Why not B?
Hi, I read your explanation for answer choice E in a previous post and while it makes perfect sense and I appreciate it, I was wonderfing if there was a way to eliminate B? I don't see anything glaringly wrong with the answer choice. Wyy does B not match the flaw in the stimulus?
Thanks in advance!
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Thanks for the question! I’m glad you understand the correct answer choice, which is (E), because technically, the contrapositive is used correctly here. What really makes (E) the correct answer choice is the appeal to authority: in the stimulus, the argument appeals to Senator Armand, a distinguished mathematician and a woman of indisputable brilliance. Similarly, in (E), the appeal to authority is to Lomas, a bicycle engineering expert.
Now let’s take a look at (B). Gloria’s drama teacher makes a claim, but Gloria disputes it, and so the teacher’s claim can’t be true. There’s a number of ways in which this diverges from the stimulus to a greater extent than (E), and remember that on the LSAT, we must always be on the lookout for the correct answer choice. This question is a great example of why it’s important to read through all the answer choices, since (B) seems alright, but (E) is clearly a better answer choice. (B), first of all, sides against who the “expert” would be (the teacher) with the non-expert, Gloria, the child. In addition, Gloria attended every class and was actually there and would know, whereas Senator Armand (as far as we know) hasn’t done any work on this report or with the reclamation program, and similarly, Lomas clearly hasn’t seen the actual race, whereas Moira has. Both of these contribute to (B)’s being wrong.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
