PTC.S2.Q14 - British Government and UFOs

noreentareque00-1-1

I'm very confused as to why the answer is B and not C. Looking back at it now, I'm trying to make justifications for why the answer should be B (EX: B says "the government would withhold" which is not as definitive as in C which says "the government would deny requests"). Is it not C because C is too broad and is not focusing on UFOs specifically? I figured its broad language was why it was the correct answer but maybe that was not the right way to go about it.

LSAT Lizard

For this question the first thing that leaps out to me is that the gap between the premises and conclusion is particularly wide. The premises tell us that the British government does not fulfill civilian researcher requests for information about UFO sightings. They also tell us that some civilian researchers have criticized this.

And then suddenly the conclusion says, this indicates there have been extraterrestrial space craft sightings on Earth!

The premises didn't even mention extraterrestrial space craft. They mentioned a broader category of flying things (UFOs), but that's not the same at all.

Consider a simpler argument: 'Sam saw a mammal in his yard last night. So Sam must have seen a unicorn.' A good way to strengthen this argument would be to establish that 'mammal' = 'unicorn.' A good AC might say 'Unicorns are the only mammal in Sam's country.'

Similarly, a good way to strengthen the argument in the stimulus would be to establish that 'UFO the government won't tell civilian researchers about' = 'extraterrestrial space craft.' AC B tells us that every time the government withholds information about a UFO, that UFO must be an extraterrestrial space craft. Not telling civilian researchers about a UFO is an example of withholding information about a UFO, so we're getting the exact link that we wanted to strengthen the argument- making AC B a great answer.

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The phrase 'withhold information' in AC B and the phrase 'deny the requests... to have access to data' in AC C are functionally identical here; they're equally definitive phrases. If I'm withholding certain information, that also means I'm denying requests to access that information. Conversely if I'm denying requests to access certain information, that means I am withholding that information. These phrases are just saying the same thing using different words, so I wouldn't consider AC B as being less definitively worded than AC C.

AC C fails because we don't have any good link between 'something to hide' and 'extraterrestrial space craft.' Let's say AC C is true, and the government really is hiding something. It could be nearly anything! Maybe they're hiding the fact that they ran out of funding for UFO-detecting radars and the whole department has been doing nothing for the last month. Maybe they're hiding the fact that they detected a brand new USA spy plane, so USA doesn't find out their spy planes have been compromised. The example possibilities are endless, and 'they're hiding extraterrestrial crafts' is just one of those endless possibilities. This is a case where the AC using such broad phrasing makes it a worse strengthener, not better.