PrepTest 101, Section 2, Question 16
The authors of a recent article examined warnings(69 more words not shown)
The answer to which one(13 more words not shown)
- AWere the fish(19 more words not shown)
- BHow numerous were(19 more words not shown)
- CDid any of(22 more words not shown)
- DWhat proportion of(15 more words not shown)
- EWere any of(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if something unusual is happening to North American fish?
The author uses their extinctions as evidence that animal extinction is accelerating. But North American fish aren't all fish, much less all animals. Birds, deer, tigers, or fish elsewhere might be following different patterns. Before carrying this example over to animals generally, I'd want to know whether it represents the larger group.
Keep the claim about acceleration straight too. A high extinction rate could stay high without getting higher. The disputed point is whether the rate is now increasing, not merely whether many animals are dying out. The thirteen extinctions in the first period and twenty-seven afterward are offered as a sign of that increase.
I would also ask how much we can learn from these forty species and subspecies. The number alone doesn't tell us whether the sample is informative. The more direct question is whether their pattern is typical: did this group experience something that makes it a poor guide to the broader trend?
What we’re looking for
We're asked which question would most help evaluate the argument. We don't need a fact that definitely supports it or definitely weakens it. We want a question whose different answers would change how much confidence we put in the connection from fish to animals generally.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
This asks exactly whether the fish example is a poor guide to the wider animal pattern. Notice “unrepresentative”: a yes would mean the group is atypical, giving us a reason to doubt the author's use of it. A no would remove that particular concern and make the comparison more defensible.
For example, if these fish experienced a local change that didn't affect other animals, their losses might tell us little about the broader trend. If their extinction pattern tracked that of animals generally, the example would become much more useful. Either answer matters to the argument, which is why the question helps us evaluate it.
- B
This asks how many individual fish there used to be, not whether the pattern of disappearing species represents other animals. Losing a once-abundant species could be striking, but a species with a million members and a species with a thousand members each count as one species becoming extinct. Their former population sizes don't settle the step from these fish extinctions to an overall trend across animals.
- C
Their place of origin doesn't by itself tell us whether their extinction pattern resembles that of animals generally. Fish that originated elsewhere could be typical or atypical of the broader pattern. We would need an additional connection between origin and extinction trends before this question would do the work A does directly.
- D
Some previously endangered fish could recover while other fish species disappear. Knowing the share that recovered would tell us something about that endangered group, but it doesn't tell us whether the cited extinctions are representative of animal extinction generally. The argument needs that broader comparison, not just another fact about fish that survived.
- E
Commercial importance concerns how people use or value the fish economically. A commercially important species and a species nobody sells can both become extinct. Without a connection to the broader extinction pattern, knowing which ones mattered commercially doesn't help assess the inference from this group to animals generally.
More Strengthen questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Strengthen questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.