LSAT 116 – Section 3 – Question 19

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June 2004

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve This gives you an idea of how this question is “curved”— in other words, what level of scorer is likely to get this question right. It shows a model of scaled LSAT score vs probability of getting the question correct. It is based on student test results for each question. The gray bar extends from the score for a 25% chance, to the score for a 75% chance of getting the question correct. The black line in the middle is the score for a 50% chance of getting the question correct. The percentage at the right is the expected chance of someone with the same score as you on that PrepTest getting that question correct	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation

Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve This gives you an idea of how this question is “curved”— in other words, what level of scorer is likely to get this question right. It shows a model of scaled LSAT score vs probability of getting the question correct. It is based on student test results for each question. The gray bar extends from the score for a 25% chance, to the score for a 75% chance of getting the question correct. The black line in the middle is the score for a 50% chance of getting the question correct. The percentage at the right is the expected chance of someone with the same score as you on that PrepTest getting that question correct	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT116 S3 Q19	+LR	Weaken +Weak Causal Reasoning +CausR Net Effect +NetEff	A 12% 159 B 72% 165 C 4% 155 D 1% 155 E 11% 159	140 152 163	+Medium	146.244 +SubsectionMedium

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Today’s farmers plant only a handful of different strains of a given crop. Crops lack the diversity that they had only a few generations ago. Hence, a disease that strikes only a few strains of crops, and that would have had only minor impact on the food supply in the past, would devastate it today.

Summarize Argument

The author concludes that a disease that would have had minor impacts on food supply in the past would be devastating today. This prediction is based on the observation that today’s crops lack diversity compared to crops in the past because farmers today only plant a few strains of a given crop.

Notable Assumptions

The author assumes that farmers today don’t have any way besides diversity to protect against diseases.

In the past, crop diseases would often devastate food supplies throughout entire regions.

The conclusion discusses specifically the diseases that would have had only minor impacts on the food supply in the past; the diseases referenced in (A) are outside of the scope of the argument.

Affected crops can quickly be replaced from seed banks that store many strains of those crops.

This weakens the argument. It gives a reason that a disease that would have had a minor impact on the food supply in the past would not be devastating today: today’s farmers have another way to protect against the disease other than crop diversity.

Some of the less popular seed strains that were used in the past were more resistant to many diseases than are the strains popular today.

This compares the less popular strains of the past with the popular modern strains; this comparison isn’t relevant. (C) also tells us that some old strains were more robust than the popular modern strains, which is consistent with the claim that today’s crops are more vulnerable.

Humans today have more variety in their diets than in the past, but still rely heavily on cereal crops like rice and wheat.

The argument is about the crops that make up the food supply, not specifically human diets as a whole, so this is not relevant to the argument.

Today’s crops are much less vulnerable to damage from insects or encroachment by weeds than were crops of a few generations ago.

The argument is specifically about the damage caused by diseases; it could be the case that today’s crops are safer from insects and weeds, but that diseases are still able to devastate today’s food supply.

LSAT 116 – Section 3 – Question 19

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LSAT PrepTest 116 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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