This is a strengthening question, as the stem states: Which one of the following principles, if established, most strongly supports the argument?
This is a nice and short stimulus. Our author concludes purely on the basis that cigarette smoking has been found to be a health hazard, all smoking advertisements should be banned. We want a principle that justifies this conclusion about what ought to happen. On to the answers:
Answer Choice (A) This is bait answer, and what makes this question particularly difficult. What we have to infer is that there are other ways of promoting smoking besides showing people smoking.
Answer Choice (B) Again, we want a reason to ban all advertisements that promote smoking; not just the ones that are misleading.
Answer Choice (C) Ok, but even if they did our author still believes they should be banned.
Answer Choice (D) We’ve been told nothing about government standards.
Correct Answer Choice (E) Bingo! What we need to catch on to is the contrapositive of this answer; if a product is unhealthy (i.e a health hazard) then it shouldn’t be promoted by advertisements. It would follow from this principle and the fact cigarette smoking has been shown to be unhealthy that cigarettes should not be promoted, which would support the government banning such promotions.
This is a strengthening question: Which one of the following, if true, provides the most support for the argument in the passage?
The first thing we learn is that Zeria is severing its diplomatic relations with Nandalo ostensibly because of its human rights violations. However, hypocritically, Zeria continues to maintain relations with countries known to have a far worse human rights record than Nandalo. Based on this, the author concludes that this decision to sever diplomatic ties cannot be because of Zeria’s commitment to human rights. We are essentially being given an explanation for an event, that Zeria cut ties because of human rights violations, and being asked to support the conclusion that this explanation is not true. In this case I think it might be helpful to treat this like a weakening question; we want to weaken a hypothesis, so introducing an alternate hypothesis would be a great answer! Let’s see our options:
Correct Answer Choice (A) This gives Zeria another motivation to sever diplomatic ties, and consequently is an excellent alternate hypothesis. Zeria cut ties because of foreign pressure, not human rights violations.
Answer Choice (B) This does nothing to support that Zeria had other motives.
Answer Choice (C) Who cares what countries have expressed concern about.
Answer Choice (D) This doesn’t provide any support that Zeria didn’t sever diplomatic ties because of human rights violations.
Answer Choice (E) Who cares about the opposition party’s policy. Why did the government of Zeria sever diplomatic relations?
Here we have a strengthening questions: Which one of the following most strongly supports the explanation given in the argument?
Our stimulus begins with a phenomenon; distemper virus has caused two thirds of the seal population of the north sea to die since 1988. Our author then offers the hypothesis that the reason the normally latent virus has acted up is that pollution weakened the seals immune systems. Since this is a strengthening question and we have a hypothesis, a great answer would be one which eliminates an alternative explanation for why the virus killed so many seals, or introduces more information consistent with the hypothesis. Let’s see what we get!
Correct Answer Choice (A) If pollution is weakening the immune system of the seals, we would expect it might be doing this to other animals! This answer introduces a result we would expect if our hypothesis was true, and therefore strengthens it.
Answer Choice (B) Good for them, but this doesn’t strengthen our hypothesis. If anything it weakens it since our hypothesis requires “severe” pollution and this suggests pollution could be much better than it was before.
Answer Choice (C) I certainly hope the pollution isn’t that bad then, but this does nothing for our argument.
Answer Choice (D) This is just a factoid.
Answer Choice (E) This weakens our argument by introducing an alternate explanation.
Here we have a most strongly supported question: The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following conclusions?
The first thing the stimulus tells us is that there is a growing discrepancy between the punishments for famous and unknown defendants convicted of the same crime, where the famous person gets off with community service while the unknown person almost always gets real prison time. So your average Joe gets 5 years in prison for his DUI, but the new famous singer gets a couple months picking up trash; seems pretty unfair! The stimulus ends by reminding us that the principle of equality before the law demands that fame and publicity are put to the side when deciding a case. So the law is supposed to consider the crime itself and not whether the person who committed it is a celebrity. And that’s all we learn! We’re looking for a conclusion that would be a good fit for these premises; it will follow without us having to make any unreasonable assumptions. Let’s see what we get:
Answer Choice (A) We have reason to believe it is not being applied in some cases, but to say it is only being applied in a few cases requires a wild assumption; namely that just because this one subset of cases (cases with famous defendants) seems to be increasingly breaking the principle, that most cases are breaking it! We unfortunately just don’t know anything about cases other than these well-publicized trials; we always want to avoid concluding about things we haven’t been told anything about on MSS questions.
Answer Choice (B) Although their fame should not affect the decision concerning their punishment, that doesn’t mean there needs to be the same outcome as people without fame. Maybe celebrities tend to commit worse crimes so they should be getting more prison time even if we treat them the same as non-celebrities (i.e. judge their crimes rather than their fame).
Answer Choice (C) We have been given no information about any principles that can override it.
Correct Answer Choice (D) The growing variance in punishments for similar crimes suggests that in some cases celebrities are getting special treatment, which would break the principle of equality.
Answer Choice (E) Treating everyone equally doesn’t mean you can never be lenient depending on the case. It does mean that you can’t be lenient just because someone is famous, but we haven’t been told about anything else the principle rules out. To draw this conclusion requires we assume that the principle exclude any other possible reason for leniency; that’s a big assumption.
This is a flawed question, and we know this because of the question stem: Which one of the following, if true, indicates the most serious flaw in the method used by the investigators?
The stimulus is recapping a TV program about astrology, where they found 20 people who were Geminis and would be willing to go on TV for an interview and take a personality test. The test confirmed that these people were more extroverted and social than the average person. Therefore, the argument concludes that the investigation supports the view that birth signs affect personality. The argument is assuming that all Gemini is outgoing and social, but since they only pick Gemini who would be willing to go on TV, it’s sort of a pre-selected group. After all, if someone was more introverted they’d be less willing to agree to be interviewed, regardless of their sign. There is a correlative-causal flaw here, and the argument makes an invalid and hasty conclusion based on a group they selected that would confirm their conclusion. The way they selected their data points gave them a false positive.
Answer Choice (A) is not the flaw; who gave and scored the test has nothing to do with the way this argument is flawed.
Answer Choice (B) also does not indicate the flaw; in fact, this could in some ways strengthen the argument.
Answer Choice (C) describes what’s happening in the stimulus, but it doesn’t point out what's wrong with the argument.
Answer Choice (D) also does not point out a flaw in the argument: an abundance or dearth of Gemini does nothing to point out the flaw in our answer.
Correct Answer Choice (E) points out the flaw perfectly. What if the study just completely ignores the Gemini because they don’t want to participate in the first place?
This is a weakening question: Which one of the following, if true, would cast doubt on the experimenters’ conclusion?
Our stimulus begins with a definition of nuclear fusion; nuclear fusion is a process where nuclei fuse and release energy. We then learn that this process creates a by-product; helium-4 gas. Having established this context, we now learn about an experiment involving “heavy” water. I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what “heavy” water is; luckily the LSAT is about our reasoning skills and not chemistry. We learn that the water is contained in a sealed flask within an air-filled chamber, and that after the experiment some Helium-4 was found in the chamber. The people running the experiment concluded that there must have been nuclear fusion that happened. Since this is a weakening question involving a hypothesis, we should look for an alternate hypothesis in the answer choices, an alternate possible explanation for why there was helium-4 in the chamber. Let’s see what we get:
Answer Choice (A) The researcher’s explanation is entirely compatible with this.
Answer Choice (B) But was it fusion that produced the helium-4?
Correct Answer Choice (C) We are told the chamber was air-filled, so we would therefore expect that level of helium-4. This is a much better explanation than that nuclear fusion occurred!
Answer Choice (D) But it was helium-4 they found. If anything this suggests the helium-4 was recently produced which might support the fusion hypothesis.
Answer Choice (E) Cool, but we weren’t told anything about heat; for all we know there was a large release of heat and our experiment runners hypothesis is entirely correct.
Here we have a weakening question, indicated by: Which one of the following, if true, would tend to invalidate use of the ratings for the agency’s purpose?
So we’ve got a government rating system where the highest ranked airlines are the ones with the lowest proportion of late flights. So the number one airline would be the one whose ratio of total flights to late flights is the lowest. From the question stem, we know we want to weaken the agency’s reasoning for why this rating would be good for their purpose. We’re next told what this purpose is; the agency thinks the rating can establish an objective measure of the efficiency of the airlines personnel in meeting flight schedules. So the conclusion we want to weaken here is that the proportion of late flights actually represents how efficient the staff of each airline are. We can think of this as hypothesis; the agency believes the reason airlines have more or less late flights is the efficiency of their staff. A good answer choice will be one which introduces an alternate explanation for why airlines are late. On to the answers:
Answer Choice (A) Ok, but this wouldn’t affect whether the staff are what determine flights being late.
Correct Answer Choice (B) If flights are often made late by weather, and some airlines are more affected than others, then it is unlikely the rating would be representative of staff performance because a lot of the time it’s out of their control.
Answer Choice (C) This gives us a reason why being late isn’t always the end of the world, but has no bearing on whether the lateness of flights reflects staff performance.
Answer Choice (D) This is totally compatible with what we want to weaken.
Answer Choice (E) Who cares how we define a late flight? Our interest is in whether lateness represents inefficiency on the part of flight staff.
This is a weakening question, as our stem asks: Which one of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument?
Our stimulus begins the claim that learning how to build a nest is important for the breeding success for birds. As an example of this claim’s truth, we’re told about a study where blackbirds were less successful breeding while nesting than older birds or even themselves are a year later. So there is a correlation between nest building and high breeding success, got it. To further strengthen the conclusion, the argument eliminates the alternate explanation that it is just about how large and strong the birds are, because they are fully grown once they leave their parents nest. The stimulus ends by reaffirming its conclusion that nesting benefits breeding success. Since this is a weakening question, we want to find an answer that undermines this hypothesis that the higher breeding rates are because of the nesting. Let’s see our options:
Answer Choice (A) Who cares? They could build really nice nests and it still be true that nesting experience benefits breeding success.
Correct Answer Choice (B) This gives an alternate explanation for the increase in breeding success; it’s not their nesting experience, but their experience of attempting to breed, which leads to an increased success rate over successive years.
Answer Choice (C) This would support the conclusion that nesting experience contributes to breeding success.
Answer Choice (D) So just as the argument stated, it’s not because of size and strength; this does not weaken the argument at all.
Answer Choice (E) Ok but we are interested in the increase after they started to nest; who cares about the birds that didn’t make it (no offense to any avian 7Sagers)?
This is a weakening question: Which one of the following, if true, would weaken the argument?
Here we have a stimulus which begins with the conclusion; our author declares that there is no point in requiring scientists’ work be officially confirmed before being published. This is because there is already an unofficial confirmation system; the ability of other scientists to replicate results. Poor scientific work will be revealed when other scientists fail to replicate it, and therefore will cause no harm. So we don’t need to vet what gets published because scientists will naturally figure out whether a publication is flawed and harmful. Interesting! Our job is to weaken this conclusion: we want ACs which suggest that the official confirmation is important and not redundant! Let’s see what we get:
Correct Answer Choice (A) Bingo! If replication can take years to occur, then that is years a flawed study could be out there causing harm.
Answer Choice (B) This strengthens the conclusion, by providing another vetting system which could catch issues regardless of official confirmation.
Answer Choice (C) This also supports that replication will be able to find errors if unofficially confirmed work is published.
Answer Choice (D) This does nothing to undermine the author’s conclusion.
Answer Choice (E) Cool! But what does this have to do with whether official confirmation is important!
This is both a strengthening and a weakening question, as we are tasked with strengthening one position and weakening another in one fell swoop: Which one of the following, if it occurred, would be the strongest evidence favoring Ms. Fring’s position over Mr. Blatt’s position?
Our stimulus is a dialogue between a Mr. Blatt and Ms. Fring. Blatt argues that expert consultants are worth their expensive fees because they help executives make better decisions. Fring is having none of this, and instead argues that consultants are hired to help executives escape responsibility, and are only high paid so that more blame can be laid on them when things go wrong. We want an answer choice that will weaken Blatt’s high demand hypothesis while supporting Fring’s fall-guy hypothesis. Let’s take a look at our options:
Answer Choice (A) There is nothing to suggest they are hiring him to take the blame if something goes wrong.
Answer Choice (B) This gives us practically no real information.
Correct Answer Choice (C) Fring’s hypothesis suggests that consultants are hired because of their expensive fees, while Blatt’s suggests it is simply a function of supply/demand. A consultant company lowering fees and losing business suggests they were being hired because of their fees, while also being a completely confusing result if the consultants were being hired for their skills; surely more people would hire them for those skills if they were cheaper! This supports Fring’s belief that it’s their fees which consultants are hired for, and is inconsistent with Blatt’s explanation.
Answer Choice (D) This suggests the consultant is being hired for his skills, not his price.
Answer Choice (E) What this answer is really missing is any information about whether the blame was laid on the consultant; but regardless marginally profitable is still profitable!