PT17.S2.Q08 - the fishing industry cannot currently be relied on

Samcandoit!

http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-17-section-2-question-08/
Could someone help me go through this question please? I have read the stimulus for at least 4 times, but still have not idea about what the stimulus is talking about. Thank you.

Matt1234567

Hi Sam, I can help you out.

Conclusion: The government should institute a program under which tissue samples from the dead birds are examined to determine the amount of toxins in the fish eaten by the birds.

Why? Because the fishing industry cannot be relied upon to help the government count the sea bird killed by net fishing, since an accurate count might result in the restriction of net fishing. And if the government institutes the program, the industry would then have incentive to turn in the bird carcasses, since the industry needs to know whether the fish it catches are contaminated with toxins.

We are asked in question 8 to undermine this conclusion, and thus, undermine that the program should not be instituted or is not likely to achieve its goals. So how can we do this? Well, the program offered in the conclusion is a cooperative relationship between the government and the fishing industry, but more so the program relies on the willingness of the fishing industry to cooperate. Under this program, the fishing industry would be expected to turn over the total amount of dead sea birds in return for information about toxins in the fish examined from these dead sea birds. Well, what's the assumption? the assumption one is that the fishing industry can't find out about the toxins in the fish without the involvement of the government. Another assumption, is that it must turn over ALL of the fish. All we want to do is weaken that the program is likely to achieve its goals, so that is why answer choice (B) is correct. B says that the fishing industry can examine whether the fishes that it catches are contaminated with toxins by turning over only a few of the sea birds killed by its nets. If this is true, then the government cannot count ALL of the sea birds killed by the nets, or it cannot have an accurate count since it doesn't have sufficient data.

All the other answer choices are wrong because it doesn't deal with this specific issue of how many birds are turned in, or whether or not the number of birds turned in are representative of the actual number of sea birds killed by the nets.

Samcandoit!

@Matt1234567 Thank you. How you analyze the assumptions makes perfect sense.