June 1997 LSAT Section 2 Question 25

A recent survey showed that 50 percent of people polled believe that elected officials should resign if indicted for ...

Kweb1016 on January 10, 2021

Eliminating A

I had trouble picking between A and B because it seems to me like both occur in this stimulus. Ultimately, I picked A, as it seemed like the more prominent flaw. However, there can only be one right answer, so if someone could explain why B is a more egregious error in reasoning than A, I would be very appreciative. Thanks

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shunhe on January 14, 2021

Hi @Kweb2016,

Thanks for the question! (B) talks about confusing a sufficient with necessary condition. In other words, it’s a mistaken reversal. So that’s a problem with conditional logic. (A), on the other hand, talks about drawing a conclusion about an overall population based on a sample. That’s a problem with overgeneralizing. That doesn’t happen in this stimulus. The statistics in this stimulus are the result of a survey and so we have to assume that they’re true.

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