June 2020 LSAT Section 4 Question 22

Which one of the following, if true, would provide the strongest support for the author's assertion in the final sent...

jordierose02 on July 18, 2023

Confused on question.

I thought this question meant what would support the assertion in the final sentence but in the context of the passage. Meaning, I thought we were trying to figure out how to strengthen the idea of increasing the number of species would lead to more needing protection and how this would have political/economic stakes. Therefore I chose answer A. Why is this not what the question is asking for? However, regardless of that, how does E show support for the increasing number of species that need protection? E is specifically talking about species that are NOT endangered, implying that proponents of the phylogenetic concept would contest a species classification if that species was endangered, therefore reducing the number of species needing protection, which is the opposite of what the author claims.

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Emil-Kunkin on July 19, 2023

I think you were doing the right thing, but A doesn't do what you think it does.

We are trying to support the idea that adding new species is likely to increase the number of endangered species. How does the fact that international agreements about endangered species are becoming harder suggest that adding new species will mean more endangered species? I don't see the connection there. If anything, A suggests that the number of endangered species will grow because of previously non threatened species becoming threatened as a result of poor international agreements, not because of adding new species.

E however, offers us a way, albeit a slightly confusing way. If E is true, we know that the efforts to define new species will be focused more on endangered ones than on safe ones. That means that any new species that is defined is more likely than average to be endangered, since we are mainly redefining already endangered species. Imagine that only 1 percent of species are endangered. However, 50 percent of species that we decide to reconsider are endangered. This would suggest that half or so of the newly defined species are going to be endangered, which would likely mean that adding new species will mean adding new endangered species.