PT 25.S4.Q06 - the male sage grouse has air sacs

tanes256

Hey, guys! I'm having trouble understanding why B is incorrect. My reasoning for selecting B was that if the diseased male grouse were treated with antibiotics their sacs would show that they were infected and this strengthened the hypothesis because the females would see this on their sacs and would not select them because they were unhealthy. It looks like I've made some assumptions somewhere or am I even on the right path with my logic? I read two explanations that aren't close to mine.

https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-25-section-4-question-06/

BinghamtonDave

Hello. So this question follows a pattern that will come up again throughout preptests. We are asked to strengthen the hypothesis. The hypothesis given is something that purports to explain a given phenomena.
Our phenomena here is that the male bird inflates their air sacs and shows them to females. That is the thing out in the world that a hypothesis is offered to explain. The hypothesis offered to explain that phenomena is that the male birds are do this s a way of showing females that they are healthy.

The assumption in this argument (I am defining argument here as the voracity of the hypothesis to explain the given phenomena) is that these air sacks have something to do with being healthy. Presumably, that either the ability to display the air sacks or the appearance of the air sacks somehow indicates healthy.

Like many strengthen questions, we make the assumption stronger.

(B) fails here because it is vague to the point that it begs too many questions to be relevant to what we need this strengthener to do.
1.Was the disease that they were treated for something relevant to their air sacks? Or was it a foot disease or a beak disease?
2.Did the antibiotic actually cure them? Meaning was all outward appearance of the disease gone?
3.Is the fact that the females steer clear of them indicative of a left over scar from the disease or the fact that the anti-biotic releases a pheromone that the other birds can smell and they stay away from?

Like many questions, (B) masquerades as something relevant to the task before us.

What I would ask from you as a way of going deeper on this question is to clean (B) up a bit. Can you reword (B) to make it more relevant to the task we have here?

Best
David

BinghamtonDave

In summation (my apologies for the double post) the assumption you carried with you on your reading of (B) according to your post is that the antibiotics treated an air sac disease. We do not know this.

tanes256

@BinghamtonDave ok! I get it. When trying to make B relevant for the hypothesis I did run into having to come up with a lot of different things to omit so many assumptions that had to be made. Thank you!