June 2010 LSAT Section 1 Question 10

Letter to the editor: Sites are needed for disposal of contaminated dredge spoils from the local harbor. However, t...

ankita96 on July 22, 2020

Ans Choice D

Hi, While I was certain with regard to it being the answer, what made me question it was the part of expertise. What part of the stimulus would be proof to those 20,000 people not being experts. Is it because of the large number would logically indicate they are generic crowd population and cannot all be experts? Thank you in advance.

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shunhe on July 22, 2020

Hi @ankita96,

Thanks for the question! So this is really a question of where the “burden of proof” lies, right? If we have a crowd of 20,000, should we assume it’s all experts, or that there’s at least a few non experts mixed in there? I think it’s more natural to assume the latter. If someone wants to show that the crowd of 20,000 is composed of experts, the burden of proof is on them to show that. And so that’s what (D) is getting at, the conclusion is based on the testimony of people who haven’t been shown to have the appropriate expertise. Maybe they’re all experts, who knows, but the argument hasn’t done anything to prove to us that they’re all experts. And it makes more sense to assume they’re not all experts than that they are all experts, so the burden of proof is on the letter writer or the petition raiser to show this if it is true. So it’s not that the argument proved that they’re not experts, it’s that the argument doesn’t prove that they are experts.

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

ankita96 on July 23, 2020

Hi, Thank you so much. This was really helpful!

shunhe on July 27, 2020

Glad I was able to help!