60.1.6 After an oil spill

Accounts Playable

I cannot make heads are tails of this argument/figure out what it is talking about. I had no idea what any of the answer choices were doing since I couldn't understand the argument. Can someone break it down for me? This is my best paraphrase (which isn't much):

After an oil spill, rehab centers were set up to clean the oil off sea otters. The effort wasn't worth it. This is where I just flat out can't figure out what is going on. What is the rest of the argument trying to even say?

gantzerj

Hey @"Accounts Playable", just attempted this PT today so let me try giving this one a shot.
So the total number of otters affected by the oil spill, that were counted, alive and dead together, is 357 (live) +900(dead).
Now, of this total number (1257 if you're into the math), only 222 or 18% were successfully rehabilitated by this center.
The last line of the argument says that this18% success rate is still too high because all the otters affected by the oil spill weren't actually counted. Why? Because the 900 dead included in the total number, actually only represents 1/5 of the total number of otters that died. (So it's assuming that 4500 is the total number that died). Add the 4500 dead to the 357 found live, and of those, the 222 actually rehabilitated...the success rate is way lower.

Now, I don't why dead otters were included in the first place to calculate success rate, but maybe that's me. I just decided to roll with it.


A. Absolutely random and of no consequence. Who cares about the otters that weren't affected?

B. This is it. So the whole argument assumed that only 1/5th of the dead otters were found. But I can question that claim and in effect, weaken the argument.

C. Inconsequential...I don't care about the otters that weren't affected.

D. Who cares about other species.

E. Again...I don't care about cost...I am calculating the success rate on the basis of how many of the total number of otters, dead and alive, were rehabilitated.

Hope this was helpful!

Accounts Playable

@gantzerj Thanks.

This is one of the rare LSAT arguments that I couldn't figure out what was going on. Even then though, answer B is the only answer choice that talks about a potentially relevant group.