Q14 - Pratt: Almost all cases of rabies in humans

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: There is little justification for health warnings that urge officials to remove bats residing in buildings where people work or live. Premises: Bats rarely bite and the overwhelming majority don't have rabies. Background/Opposing Point: Almost all cases of rabies in humans come from animal bites, and bats do carry rabies.

Answer Anticipation:
This seems like a better-safe-than-sorry situation, does it not? Some LSAT questions are about weighing costs and benefits. We might predict an answer that weakens the argument by saying that the cost of bat removal is low and the benefit is high.

Correct answer:
B

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Irrelevant comparison. This doesn't impact our claim about bat removal.

(B) Hmm . . . rabid bats are less mobile and more aggressive than their healthy bat buddies. This might at first seem like another irrelevant comparison, but if you dig a little deeper, the "more aggressive" part is pretty darn relevant. One of our premises is that bats rarely bite. But if rabid bats are more aggressive, that indicates that they are more prone to biting. This tells us that we probably shouldn't evaluate our rabies-reduction bat policy based on the docile behavior of bats in general, and should instead base it on the aggressive behavior of rabid bats. This answer weakens the argument by attacking the relevance one of its two premises.

(C) Now, this one is tempting. It would be easy to follow this train of thought: "If almost all rabies in people comes from animal bites, and most animals that carry rabies rarely bite under normal conditions, this must mean that some rabies in people comes from being bitten by rabid animals that, under normal conditions, wouldn't have bitten. So, the fact that bats don't bite under normal conditions doesn't mean they won't bite us when rabid." However, just because most species that carry rabies don't normally bite, it could still be the case that all species from which humans contract rabies regularly bite. If that's the case, the fact that bats don't normally bite is still decent evidence that we don't need to remove them, so this doesn't weaken our argument.

(D) If anything, this strengthens the argument, providing another reason why removing building-dwelling bats isn't necessary for rabies risk reduction.

(E) Another irrelevant comparison. Awareness based on place of bat bite doesn’t tell us anything about rabies risk.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Weaken questions are generally good for prephrasing, but that doesn't always mean the correct answer will match your prephrase. Stay flexible, and look for answers that fall into any of the common weakener categories: providing an alternative, attacking a comparison, providing counter-evidence the argument overlooked, and attacking the relevance of a premise. The correct answer for this question has a foot in both of the last two camps.

#officialexplanation

[CalebP488]

I feel like this question was incredibly challenging mainly because the correct answer is, frankly, incredibly flimsy. I burned a bunch of time and still got this question wrong because I erroneously eliminated B since I perceived it to be irrelevant immediately while reading it. Obviously I should've paid more attention to the underlying premises of the argument but my larger question would be whether these correct answer choices that appear (at least to me) rather tangentially connected to the argument are becoming more common on the LSAT?

[YifanW811]

Thanks for the explanation!

However I'm still not convinced why we choose B over A.

I feel A also weakens, in that the premise is saying under normal condition, most bats do not have rabies. But A is saying, if there is one rabid bat, then other bats are more likely infected, and ultimately, the premise that "most bats do not have rabies" will not longer apply.

I did not choose B because it has an assumption that " more aggressive bats do bite more likely".

Can someone help with this?

[GabeR312]

Thanks for the explanation!

However I'm still not convinced why we choose B over A.

I feel A also weakens, in that the premise is saying under normal condition, most bats do not have rabies. But A is saying, if there is one rabid bat, then other bats are more likely infected, and ultimately, the premise that "most bats do not have rabies" will not longer apply.

I did not choose B because it has an assumption that " more aggressive bats do bite more likely".

Can someone help with this?

Think about what this is actually saying.. the bats are less mobile than usual (maybe they won't leave your house) AND now they are more aggressive. So, an aggressive, rabid animal could feel less inclined to leave your house-- therefore it should be removed.

[HarryG517]

I'm facing with the same concern as YifanW811 did,
as it said, A makes the other premise "the overwhelming majority of bats do not have rabies" less tenable, combined with the other premise"bats are shy and rarely bite", say, if 0.01% chance of getting bitten can be reasonably said as "rarely", what about the number of rabid bats increases from 1 to 1000?

But some other perspective may help us getting towards to the right choice B by eliminating A I guess, such as "Human can be considered as animal", then A seems not so good huh?
Or maybe another way, combined with timeliness, if the consequence as I and YifanW811 supposed to be happen, then it must take quite a period of time. Compared with B, a single aggressive rabid bat is more like a flying nightmare and it possesses a threat to you right now.

But I still need someone's help to evaluate the reasoning I've written for A I'm afraid such uncertainty will cost a considerable time during the precious 35 minutes...