For years scientists have been scanning the skies in the hope of finding life on other planets. But in spite of the ...

shunhe on December 21, 2020

Hi @cbear,

Thanks for the question! So we’re being asked for the main point of the argument here. And what’s the argument telling us? Well, scientists have been scanning the skies but can’t find anything, and there’s no reason to think that they ever will. So we’ll basically never find extraterrestrial life.

Now let’s take a look at (A), which tells us that there’s no reason to believe that life exists on other planets. This is somewhat close to the main point of this argument, but there’s a subtle differences, and it’s these kinds of subtle differences that you really have to watch out for on the LSAT. Does the fact that scientists can’t find extraterrestrial life anywhere mean that it doesn’t actually exist? No, it doesn’t, that’s two separate concepts. This argument isn’t arguing it doesn’t exist, just that we’ll never detect it, whether it exists or not. And, as you can tell, that’s what (C) says, and so (C) stays truer to the actual argument and so is correct.

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

Abigail-Okereke on October 6, 2022

Thanks for your explanation @Shunhe, I actually chose D. Could you explain why D doesn't work? I chose it because the stimulus was claiming no matter how much funding is put into finding extraterrestrial life, it wouldn't occur. To me, this seemed adjacent to answer choice D.

Emil-Kunkin on December 18, 2022

Hi, I think the main point is the final sentence of the paragraph. C is a perfect paraphrase of that. The author never actually said that the search would only be justified if we had already found evidence, so that cannot be the main point.