PrepTest 157, Section 1, Question 21
Some environmentalists claim that the higher the international(435 more words not shown)
Based on information in the(21 more words not shown)
- Athere are very(8 more words not shown)
- Bthe hypothesis has(4 more words not shown)
- Cdebt must be(6 more words not shown)
- Denvironmental degradation is(2 more words not shown)
- Eenvironmentalists cannot agree(7 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Why hasn't the exports promotion hypothesis been settled? The studies discussed address deforestation, and even those results are limited. The author then says that effects on pollution and depletion of other resources haven't been studied. We still don't have a complete investigation of the proposed environmental harm.
Working the answers
- A
Nothing says the hypothesis applies to very few countries. The problem identified is the state of the evidence, not a lack of countries that could fall within its scope.
- BCorrect
The hypothesis hasn't been fully investigated. In particular, the sentence about unstudied environmental indicators identifies missing research directly. The limited deforestation results don't answer all the questions about export-related environmental damage.
- C
This reverses the direction of the proposed explanation. The hypothesis starts with debt pressure and describes a shift toward exports to help repay it. It doesn't say that a country must first increase its debt in order to export more.
- D
Not yet studied doesn't mean impossible to measure. The author discusses measured correlations involving deforestation, then identifies other effects that haven't been investigated.
- E
There is no dispute over how to state the hypothesis. The author describes what it claims and questions how well it is supported. Disagreement over evidence isn't the same as disagreement over the wording of a theory.
More Detail questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Detail questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.