Q16 - Wood that is waterlogged or desiccated

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
Most Strongly Supported

Stimulus Breakdown:
Another rare Most Strongly Supported stimulus with an actual argument! Conclusion: the main evidence regarding early wheeled vehicles is from ceramic models. Premises: under normal conditions, wood disintegrates within a century or two. This means archaeologists can't find the remains of early vehicles, but they found ceramic models from the same time period which are much less susceptible to disintegration.

Answer Anticipation:
When a Most Strongly Supported question has an argument in its stimulus, there are two ways the correct answer could go. It could be a more standard correct answer that is a fact one might infer from combining parts of the stimulus, or it could be an answer that is a necessary assumption of the argument. If that seems strange, consider what a necessary assumption really is: something that must be true in order for the argument to make sense. So, if we presume the argument does make sense, then its necessary assumptions should be strongly supported, too. Predictions for standard Most Strongly Supported answer choices are hard to make because the facts can combine in so many different ways. Predictions for Necessary Assumption-style answers are easier because there are fewer options. For this one, we conclude that the main evidence for early vehicles are these models because they didn't disintegrate whereas wood does. But doesn't that assume that early vehicles were made of wood?

Correct answer:
E

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Who made the models is outside the scope of the stimulus. The quantity word is also a red flag. It's pretty specific. Can we really conclude something about "most" of the ceramic models?

(B) This one is tempting because we know that models survived. However, we don't know what percentage of them survived because our argument only deals with the ceramic ones. Maybe there were a bunch made of wood or something else that disintegrates. So what? That could totally be true, and if it was, it wouldn't impact our argument. So, this is neither an inference we can make from combining facts nor a necessary assumption of our argument.

(C) Again, the makers are outside the scope of the stimulus. This one deals with the makers of the vehicles rather than the models, but it's still not covered.

(D) Some Inference family questions tie up all the loose ends of a stimulus and wrap it up in a neat little package. This answer, and answer choice C for that matter, might appeal to those who are expecting that, because it deals with the waterlogging and desiccation from the first line. But do we really have evidence that this is true? Nope. This one is a trap. It's also an irrelevant comparison.

(E) Yuck! What a confusing answer. So many negatives! We need to figure out what this is even saying before we can evaluate it. So here goes: of the early vehicles that weren't preserved (and therefore probably disintegrated) more were wood than materials like ceramic that aren't susceptible to disintegration. Does that make sense? It sure does. Because, if that wasn't true, we'd have no reason to conclude that the models are the main evidence regarding the vehicles since presumably we'd have a bunch of actual vehicles preserved. That also matches the assumption from our prediction: that the vehicles were wood.

Takeaway/Pattern:
If a Most Strongly Supported question gives you an argument, predict that the right answer could be a necessary assumption of that argument. Rule out answers that have an unsupported quantity or degree (A and B), that are outside the scope of the stimulus (A, C, and D), or that deal with an irrelevant comparison (D). Even if you struggled to make a prediction, working wrong to right should get you close to, if not all the way to, the right answer. And if you are trying to evaluate an answer that you think might be an assumption the argument made, use the Negation Test! If the negation would ruin the argument, it's a necessary assumption and therefore the correct answer.

#officialexplanation

[NicholasJ837]

I wanted to post a reply about your reasoning Laura. Not that it is wrong, just I had read the stimulus in a different way, and perhaps I would be able to help someone who reads like I do, is studying, and perhaps didn't understand your explanation.

I got this question wrong timed, I picked C in the heat of the moment. I had eliminated the other answer choices except for C and E

Why I didn't pick E: I had read the answer as "There were literally more wooden carts than ceramic carts." I had thought to myself, well that can't be supported, so I picked C, justifying that perhaps it is supported, that had the people building the wood carts had known how to preserve them, they "wood"... I made a pun.

Although this seemed like a suspect answer, all the other answers seemed much worse

Going over this question again on review, I see where I went wrong, but my reasoning is different for why E was right.

Why E is correct: The conclusion is stated as "the MAIN evidence regarding wheeled vehicles has come from THESE (ceramic) models

We have to connect the conclusion to the premises, the premises basically state that the wooden carts disintegrated, but the ceramic ones survived.
But, what about carts made from a material other than wood or ceramic? Could we use THAT as MAIN evidence? It wasn't mentioned in the stimulus, so it wouldn't be supported.

Yet certainly is the crux as to why answer choice E is correct.

Simply put, E is saying of the wheeled carts, more were made of wood than a material more susceptible to disintegration than ceramic.

Surely this might be true, because NO OTHER materials were mentioned in the stimulus, and we only have ceramic to go off of for MAIN evidence.

I have to admit, this is a really weak answer. Going back I can see some LSAT experts trying to justify why this is a much better answer than C... But really it is slightly better than C... Hence why it is so weak

Quite honestly, I really dislike questions like these. The writers are trying to be so deceptive to the point where it gets too cryptic, and you think to yourself, no one writes like this in the real world! Yet, unfortunately, we have to deal with this type of reasoning in law all the time. It's a bummer, but it is good practice

Hope I helped in some way