June 1993 LSAT Section 4 Question 10

A distemper virus has caused two–thirds of the seal population in the North Sea to die since May 1988. The explanatio...

Elizabeth25 on May 7, 2023

without negating

i did not read this question stem as a sufficient with a necessary premise so i missed eliminating answers that way. I did end up getting it right but was stuck btwn the correct answer and (e). What in the question stem could have pointed out it was a suf. with nec premise question? and second how could i have eliminated (e) without the negation?

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Emil-Kunkin on May 7, 2023

Hi, the stem is a pretty uncommon way of asking a necessary assumption question. However, this question type boils down to "must the author believe the right answer for the argument to make sense" and that is what this question asks. Generally when a question expresses the idea that we are looking for something that the argument must have, that is a necessary assumption.

In terms of eliminating E, I would ask if the author has necessarily supposed that the pollution led to a decline in prey food. Since the argument doesn't have to assume this, we can eliminate it.