Q19 - Court analyst: Courts should not

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Weaken (flawed because it fails to consider that)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Courts shouldn't use DNA tests in criminal cases.
Evidence: If there isn't widespread agreement in the science community about a test's reliability, it's unreasonable for courts to use that test. And there exists considerable controversy among scientific experts about DNA's reliability.

Answer Anticipation:
Essentially, we're just grappling with the author's move from "there's considerable controversy about the reliability of DNA tests among scientific experts" to "There is NOT widespread agreement among scientists about the reliability of DNA tests". Those are pretty close, but you can imagine where there might be controversy, yet still widespread agreement. Widespread agreement isn't purely quantifiable, although one would assume it's more than half of a given population. And controversy isn't precisely quantifiable. You could have a very vocal minority causing controversy, even though 90% of people agree. You could also see controversy surrounding whether DNA is 99.2 or 99.6 percent accurate, but widespread agreement that DNA is "accurate enough" to be used by courts.

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This isn't a likely LSAT answer, since it basically dismisses the conversation we were having and reminds us that courts have authoritarian power. It really sounds more like it strengthens, since knowing courts aren't even bound by reliability data makes it easier to go along with the conclusion's advice.

(B) This answer attempts to object by saying, "We should still use DNA. Sure it ain't perfectly accurate, but that shouldn't be our threshold for whether or not evidence is admissible." Well, who said that perfectly accurate WAS our threshold? The author make it seem like "widespread agreement about reliability" was the threshold, and this answer doesn't discuss that idea at all. So this is talking about something we were never talking about. And it isn't talking about what we were talking about.

(C) Yes! There's widespread agreement that DNA testing is "reliable enough", but controversy about its exact degree of reliability.

(D) This sounds like it strengthens the author's argument. I can't tell if by "scientific witnesses" they mean literal witnesses at the trial or just the generic sense of 'testimony' we might say about any supporting claim. Either way, this answer is creating more roadblocks to DNA. The author wants to keep DNA out. So it fits the author's purpose more than ours. We're trying to counterargue that "courts SHOULD allow DNA tests".

(E) Taking it from 'criminal' to 'noncriminal' is hopefully a big red flag that's emblazoned "out of scope". Even as weak analogous evidence, this would go in the direction of strengthening, not weakening.

Takeaway/Pattern: If we break down the core and see that the author has provided a rule "If X, then Y" and concluded "Y", then we are basically tasked with analyzing whether the author has ever established X. In this case, "did the author convince me that there is NOT widespread agreement among scientists about DNA evidence?' She said "there exists considerable controversy", but is that the same thing? Our correct answer addresses that tension.

#officialexplanation

[zainrizvi]

I'm having a bit of trouble coming up with the rationale for the answer choice. I'll try and explain my thought process for each choice:

(A) is incorrect because the analyst says courts SHOULD not allow, not CANNOT allow. So whether courts can or not is out of scope.

(B) Court analyst never said that he wants evidence to absolutely certain. He just said he wanted scientific consensus. So even if the standard isn't absolute certainty, it doesn't hurt his argument.

(C) The court analyst is saying that there exists a lot of controversy about HOW reliable these tests are. Then he says that because there isn't widespread agreement - they shouldn't be used. Well what if the dispute is between scientists who think its 98 percent accurate vs scientists who think its 99 percent accurate.

Intuitively I understood this error but I am struggling to justify it, given the text. Is it because there is a shift in meaning between the two uses of reliable? I feel like the first one is talking about how reliable in relative terms , while the second portion is talking about reliability in absolute terms.


(D) Court of law. Scope shift - we are only talking about criminal cases. Noncriminal cases can do whatever they like.

(E) Noncriminal cases? Irrelevant. Only talking about criminal cases here.

[ivankrasnov88]

I like your rationale for knocking out D, thanks I didn't pick up on that over-generalization (how a court of law encompasses noncriminal matters as well, but our scope is limited to criminal cases).

My reason for knocking out D was that the court analyst DOESN'T fail to take this into account, in fact, it seemed to me that he/she wants "data to not be admitted without scientific witnesses agreeing about how reliable they are".

Here's my approach to the question:
With regards to the stimulus: upon my first read-through, the flaw that jumped out at me was an over-generalization: controversy among scientific experts doesn't necessarily translate into 'widespread disagreement in the scientific community'. Unfortunately, this wasn't mentioned in the answers. Aside from this, the argument structure seemed acceptable: a principle is given "unless there is widespread agreement in the scientific community, it is unreasonable for the courts to allow evidence", and a violation of the principle is presented: "there exists considerable controversy". (via the contrapositive)

The only thing left to attack is the premises, and C was the only one that remotely seemed acceptable, though I didn't feel fully comfortable picking this answer.

[vik]

The stimulus says that evidence should be allowed only if there is widespread agreement about how reliable the test is. Ans C says there is widespread agreement about how reliable the test is (while the disagreement is only about exactly how reliable it is). So the test should be allowed. This destroys the analysts argument, so C is correct.

[ohthatpatrick]

You all did a wonderful job of summing up the reasons to get rid of the other answers (including both legit reasons for getting rid of D) as well as the justification/weirdness of picking (C).

To go back to the original poster's idea that we had a distinction between relative reliability "how reliable is it?" and absolute reliability "is it reliable?", that is definitely the distinction that (C) is introducing.

However, I would agree with the second poster that this distinction is NOT present in the original argument. In both mentions of reliability, the author uses the relative sense of "how reliable" it is.

Like the second poster, I was assuming the flaw was equating "there exists considerable controversy" with "there is not widespread agreement".

In a sense, that is what (C) exploits. There IS widespread agreement about how reliable the test is: HIGHLY reliable. However, there can still exist considerable controversy about how reliable the tests are: they disagree about EXACTLY how reliable they are.

Still, I think (C) is a pretty funky correct answer. I wouldn't say that it really addresses a reasoning flaw. To me it doesn't dispute the logic; it disputes the wording of the "unless" premise.

It introduces a distinction into that rule that would amend it to be "unless there is widespread agreement that a certain test is highly reliable, it is unreasonable to use that test".

The distinction basically changes the Unless rule from hinging on the widespread agreement about the relative quality "exactly how reliable" to hinging on agreement about the absolute quality "is it highly reliable?".

It's VERY rare for a Flaw question to more or less attack the validity of a premise. I can only think of 1 or 2 other examples in the canon of LSAT questions.

But great work with your process of elimination, since (C) is definitely the most supportable answer.

[Acing LSAT]

The thing I don't get about this question is that the correct answer attacks the premise, which is one of the cardinal sins of the LSAT takers. "Thou shall never choose answer choices that attack the premise"

I understand that it is illogical to assume that just because we don't absolute agreement about how reliable a test is therefore we cant use it. After all everyone could agree it is 99% accurate but argue if it is 99.1% or 99.2% accurate.

But we are taught never to question a given statement in the LSAT.

so what did I miss? What lesson should I take?

[ericha3535]

Can someone go in depth with b?

[ttunden]

Can someone go in depth with b?

so basically with B, it isn't a flaw or whats wrong with the analyst's reasoning. The analyst never assumes that it absolutely has to be 100% certain.

The authors error in reasoning is going from saying there is a controversy about how reliable the tests are to saying that there is NO widespread agreement about how reliable the test is.

Controversy does not equal not having a widespread agreement. You could still have an agreement but have a controversy.


for A - this is pretty much out of scope or has no bearing on the argument.

[williamp196]

What would this type of flaw be categorized as?

[Laura Damone]

I wouldn't consider this one a flaw with a name. About 50% of flaw questions on the LSAT have flaws with names. The other 50% are arguments that rest on assumptions or overlook potential objections. This argument falls into the latter category.