PT29.S4.Q17 - studies of the reliability of eyewitness

AnthonyScalia

Hello! I didn't see any prior discussions on this question, and it's confusing me a bit so I wanted to get some outside opinions!
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-29-section-4-question-17/

We have an underlying principle/SA question which means that our answer needs to fill the logic gap pretty much completely.

Background info says that confidence of a testimony has little correlation with the accuracy of said testimony.
Support says that factors can alter the confidence of a testimony without changing its accuracy.
Conclusion says that police officers shouldn't allow situations where witnesses giving testimony can hear other witnesses giving testimonies.

The designated correct answer for gives us the principle that the confidence in one's testimony is affected by seeing other testimonies. To me, this leaped out as a wrong answer choice because the passage seems to suggest that confidence in one's testimony doesn't really matter, so there would be no incentive to prevent it.

D, on the other hand, seemed to fill the gap using unusual, but plausibly correct logic. If the police, for some reason, cared about confidence more than accuracy, factors that change confidence would want to be controlled. I don't know why Police would want to know about confidence rather than accuracy, but it's not our job as test takers to question the likelihood of a gap-closer to occur in the real world; we want to know if that gap closer, taken as it is, would bridge the support with the conclusion.

D does it in an ugly fashion, but I don't think A does it at all. Knowing that viewing other testimonies can alter confidence doesn't give us any logical reason for police officers wanting to prevent it. We can't bridge the gap between evidence and officers stopping testimony exposure without understanding the criterion based on which an officer would want to prevent testimony exposure. Even if you make the least extreme assumption and consider that police would want to stop something that alters the accuracy of a testimony, (since accuracy of evidence is important to court cases) answer A becomes more flawed in that it gives the support an attribute that the police wouldn't care about, or use in a decision for policy.

Any help is appreciated Thanks guys!

akistotle

https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-29-section-4-question-17/

Knowing that viewing other testimonies can alter confidence doesn't give us any logical reason for police officers wanting to prevent it.

The conclusion does not say anything about whether the police officers want to prevent it. The conclusion is about whether they should or should not let witnesses hear each other. I don't know why we have to care about what police are more interested in doing. Even if police officers more interested in confidence, we don't know if that means they should let witnesses hear each other.

Sami

I agree with what @akistotle said about why answer choice D is not correct.

Principle questions where there is a big gap because the conclusion is coming out of nowhere pretty much need a connection to the premise.

For example: Cats get sick when they are scared for a long period of time. Therefore People who have cats should not buy cucumbers. The conclusion about why we should not buy cucumbers is coming out of nowhere. Nothing in our premise about knowing that cats get sick for a long period of time tells us anything about the relationship between cats and cucumbers. The right answer would connect Cats getting sick to cucumbers -that's the missing premise.

LSAT arguments are a bit more complex grammatically but logically they are the same if you remove all the language fluff.

Our premise talks about how certain things affect eyewitness confidence but not the accuracy. Then the conclusion talks about that from this information Police officers are advised about not doing suspect lineups where the eyewitnesses can hear each other. This conclusion about what Police officers are advised to do in suspect lineups pretty much comes out of nowhere like our cucumber statement and needs a connection to what was said before.

Ask yourself, why does the author jump from information that confidence can be affected to not doing suspect lineups?
The answer would be that confidence of eyewitnesses must be affected by suspect lineups. Which is exactly what answer choice A says.

Answer choice D talk about Police officers are more interested in confidence of eyewitnesses than accuracy. Great. But does this statement tell you why they were advised to not do suspect lineups? It does not and therefore is not the principle which allows you to conclude why your conclusion is accurate from your premises.

AnthonyScalia

I appreciate the responses @akistotle and @Sami ! It's a lot more clear now why D is not correct.

However, I'm still a little bit shaky on why A is correct.

In creating a logical connection to the premise, we need to validate that the premise has to do with, and indeed supports the conclusion. We have no information that indicates the kind of support that would influence what the officers "should do."

Here's a version of the argument that underlines the problem I see:

Background: One's favorite flavor of Dum-Dum lollipop has shown to have no correlation with the accuracy of their testimony.

Support: Factors can alter one's own favorite Dum-Dum flavor without changing the accuracy of their testimony.

Conclusion: Police officers shouldn't allow Dum-Dum cross-olfaction in the court room.

Purported Gap Closer: Getting a jaunty whiff of someone else's favorite Dum-Dum lollipop flavor in the court room may alter the selection of one's own favorite flavor.

The problem is, of course, why do I care at all about Dum-Dum lollipops? Information about dum-dum lollipops tells me absolutely nothing about what police officers should or shouldn't do. I don't even know what determines the things that police officers should or shouldn't do. Even if I were to use a little bit of outside knowledge and assume that the police should do things that are best for the trial and support testimony accuracy, I still have no reason to believe that this lollipop nonsense lends any logical support to a conclusion with the implications of curtailing inaccuracy. The premise is still insufficient with the gap closer, since the only thing we know about courtroom cross-olfaction is that it can (and in this case, might be likely to) change flavor preference, which is arbitrary and irrelevant to anything that determines what officers should or shouldn't do.

Because "confidence" has no inherent connection to anything discussed in the passage, it's just as arbitrary as the deliberately absurd "favorite Dum-Dum Lollipop flavor."

I know that flavor preference doesn't correlate with accuracy.
I know that flavor preference can be changed without affecting accuracy.
I know that flavor preference very well could change if we let people smell other flavors.

Now suddenly police shouldn't let people smell other flavors in the court room? I don't see any way we can come to that conclusion given those three pieces (BG, Support, and Sufficient Assumption respectively.)

inactive

Bumping this to the top