PrepTest 110, Section 2, Question 9
A university study reported that between 1975 and(66 more words not shown)
The argument's reasoning is flawed(5 more words not shown)
- Adistinguish between a(19 more words not shown)
- Bdistinguish between a(9 more words not shown)
- Crecognize that only(8 more words not shown)
- Drecognize that two(8 more words not shown)
- Erecognize that varying(10 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Different methods might explain the different results. Have we shown that they do?
One study says the average workweek increased between 1975 and 1983; the other says it declined. I'd want to know what each study measured. Perhaps they focused on different kinds of workers, or used different procedures to collect the information. Those possibilities could matter, but simply noticing that the methods differ doesn't tell us how the difference produced opposite findings.
What we’re looking for
The author stops there anyway: no further explanation is needed. I'm not ready to stop. Which result should we trust, and what accounts for the disagreement? For the flaw question, I'd look for the failure to establish that the difference in methods actually explains the difference in results. We still need to investigate what happened in these studies.
Working the answers
- A
The passage distinguishes who produced the studies: a university and the government. It doesn't establish the purpose for which the government produced its study. More importantly, identifying two institutional purposes wouldn't explain why the findings differ. That is the question the author has left unresolved.
- B
Nothing shows the author confusing how a study is conducted with why it is conducted. The author identifies a difference in methods and too quickly treats that as an explanation of the results. B substitutes a different confusion about purpose.
- C
We don't know that exactly one study was conducted properly. Both could have problems. So we cannot criticize the author for failing to recognize that one particular distribution of good and bad research must be the case. Our concern is that the disagreement still needs an explanation.
- DCorrect
Different methods can arrive at the same result. So the bare fact that these methods differ doesn't establish why these results differ.
Imagine two ways of investigating working hours both finding an average of forty hours. There would be nothing contradictory about that. A difference in procedure needn't generate a difference in the answer. Here, we need to examine what the procedures actually did and how that affected the findings before declaring the disagreement explained. D captures the gap behind our reluctance to stop investigating.
- E
Economic conditions could change the length of a workweek. But both studies concern the same country and the same period. A real increase or decline over that period doesn't, by itself, explain why one study reports an increase while the other reports a decline. E concerns why working hours change, not why reports about that change conflict.
More Flaw questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Flaw questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.