Q22 - Editorial: The government claims

[romanmuffin]

I don't fully get why D is the correct answer. I can see why the first part of the question, "the government sometimes makes unsupported claims about what situations will arise.." makes sense, but the second part just didn't sound right to me. Can someone work through this one for me?

[LSAT-Chang]

Yeah this problem was pretty difficult for me to comprehend at first, but now that I know why answer choice (D) is correct -- I'll try my best to explain it.

So basically the author is concluding that the public's fear is well founded. Why? Because even though the government contends that its recent action to limit the nuclear industry's financial liability in the case of nuclear accidents at power plants is justified by the need to protect the nuclear industry from the threat of bankruptcy, the government also contends that such a threat would be present only if injury must result from a nuclear accident. Do you understand this part?

And from this evidence, we can see that the author is assuming something along the lines of "if the government acts in a certain way to protect a company from threat and the government knows that there wouldn't be a threat unless injury could result from a company, then there is reason to believe that such injuries could result and thus the public should fear it." Would you agree?

So basically, the fact that the government is protecting the nuclear industry from threat of bankruptcy, it is basically admitting there is a possibility that injury could result from these nuclear power plants -- or else they wouldn't need to protect it from bankruptcy threat. So the two claims made by the government actually contradict the government's main claim which is that the public's fear of nuclear accidents at these plants is groundless -- do you see it?

Now with this in mind, if we look at answer choice (D), we can see that it provides us with a general principle that strengthens the argument that the public's fear is indeed well founded -- the first part of (D) says that the government sometimes makes unsupported claims about what situations will arise (so in this case, the government's claim about public's fear being groundless is unsupported since as I've mentioned above, the evidence it uses to support that claim is quite the contrary) and the second part says that it doesn't act to prevent a certain kind of situation from arising unless there is a real danger that such a situation will arise (which in this case, "if the government acts to prevent the threat from arising, there is a real danger that such a situation will arise" -- and the government did act to prevent the threat from arising, so there must be a real danger that such injury will result from a nuclear accident).

Did this sort of answer your question? I hope it was a little helpful and didn't confuse you even more!!

[chike_eze]

I don't fully get why D is the correct answer. I can see why the first part of the question, "the government sometimes makes unsupported claims about what situations will arise.." makes sense, but the second part just didn't sound right to me. Can someone work through this one for me?

I'm guessing you came down to "C" and "D". I picked C the first time. But after reviewing the question, the use of "only because" in "C" is too strong. So by process of elimination (D) is correct.

Why is D correct?
"govt sometimes makes unsupported claims about what situations will arise...".
> This is supported by the government claiming that people are entirely safe, without offering concrete evidence to support its claim.

"it does not act to prevent a certain kind of situation from arising unless there is a real danger that such a situation will arise".
> This is supported by the government's action to protect the nuclear industry against bankruptcy. In this situation, the industry's bankruptcy is more imminent (in real danger) than public safety.

[bbirdwell]

Changsoyeon, right on!
Chike_eze, I'd add a little flavor to what your'e trying to say.

the use of "only because" in "C" is too strong.

It's true that "only because" makes that first phrase a bad match for our argument, but the part that sticks out to me is the highly suspect language "best interest." Public fear is mentioned, nuclear accidents are mentioned. This is the LSAT. Stick as closely to the text as possible -- "best interest" is never mentioned, and we'd have to make several assumptions to support that phrase. (ie, is not being fearful in best interest, not having accidents, or having nuclear power at the risk of accidents? we don't know)

"it does not act to prevent a certain kind of situation from arising unless there is a real danger that such a situation will arise".
> This is supported by the government's action to protect the nuclear industry against bankruptcy. In this situation, the industry's bankruptcy is more imminent (in real danger) than public safety.

I don't think that's exactly how things match up. To me, it's more like: "certain kind of situation" = "bankruptcy due unlimited liability due to nuclear accident."

Notice that if the statement in (D) regarding the "certain situation" is NOT true, the argument doesn't really work. If the government went around trying to prevent nuclear accidents when there was NO danger of them, then there'd be nothing to fear.

Therefore, this statement validates the argument: if the govt tries to prevent it --> there's a real danger. This matches our argument: public should fear accidents because the govt is taking action to avoid bankruptcy of the industry due to accidents.

Make sense?

[johnsdouglass]

I don't really understand the explanations given in the thread so far, so I'm hoping to provide my interpretation and have someone explain what, if anything, I'm missing.

The main ideas driving the argument are:
1. The government says X is completely safe, so the public's fear is unfounded
2. The government has also taken action to reduce the liability of the industry that controls X in case X has a problem in order to protect that industry.
3. The author of the editorial then makes the point that by reducing the liability of the industry, the government is acknowledging that there is some risk with X. (If a person could never prove that X caused an injury, then the industry would never be liable, so there would be no reason to reduce liability!)
4. The conclusion is that the public's fear is actually justified.

The more brief synopsis is:
The government says something is safe, but takes steps to hedge against some bad things that could happen if that thing has some problems. Therefore, it is ok for the public to fear that thing.

A - No, the government claims the thing is safe, so we can't assume anything about what happens when the government thinks something is unsafe.
B - We don't know that the X's industry benefit from an accident at X.
C - Close, but we don't know that X is safe ONLY because the financial security of its industry needs it to be
E - The argument is concerned with the public's fear, not whether the government's actions are justified.

D - This is the answer, but it's not pretty. We do see that the government makes an unsupported claim about the safety of X, so the first part of the answer choice is great. The second part is conditional and it says the government will do something to prevent a situation only if there is a real danger of that situation occurring. We don't know anything about the "real danger" of any situation mentioned in this argument so we can't really check the validity of this part against the stimulus. Ultimately all we know that relates this answer choice back to the argument is that the government did make an unsupported claim. Turns out that this is good enough for this answer to be right since the second part of this answer does not make it wrong.

[WaltGrace1983]

(x) Govt. claims that the country's power plants are safe
(1) The govt's recent action to limit financial liability is justified by the need to protect from unlimited financial liability
(2) Unlimited liability poses a threat only if injuries can be sustained
(3) Injuries are only sustained from a nuclear accident

(C) The public's fear is well-founded

We get a lot of conditional language in here so let's break it down.

(1) Govt. wants to protect from threat
(2) Threat → Injuries are sustained
(3) Injuries sustained → Nuclear accident

(C) Public's fear is well-founded.

So what is going on here? Put simply, the hidden assumption here is that the govt. would never do something to protect against X unless there was a very real threat that X could occur.

(A) Government claims that X is unsafe → X should be assumed to be unsafe
The government actually claims that X is safe. The sufficient condition isn't satisfied thus this cannot be the correct answer.

(B) Those who have control over the occurrence of event X stand to benefit from the occurrence of event X → Fear is well-founded
This is a tempting answer because it talks about having a well-founded fear yet nowhere in the argument does it give us this sufficient condition. In fact, the argument implies that there will be some financial disadvantage if the occurrence actually happens.

(C) (Financial security of those responsible for its operation depends on it being safe → Potentially dangerous this is safe) → Eliminating the dependence is not in the best interests of the public
Despite being given the "best interests of the public" part which is clearly out of scope, once again the sufficient condition is not supported. We have no reference to dependence on something being safe

(E) Real financial threat exists → Govt. action to limit that threat is justified.
Okay this one is just a premise booster. We are given this from the argument "...justified by the need to protect the nuclear industry from the threat of bankruptcy."

Now if we look at what (D) does, it fits this "mold" so to speak.

Acts to prevent situation X → Real danger that situation X will arise
We know that the govt. has acted to prevent the situation, so the sufficient condition is satisfied. Thus, there is a real danger that the situation will arise! Ultimately, this means that the fear is in fact well-founded

[JohnK403]

I understood this argument and got the correct answer. However, I am still confused with the language of answer (D). (I chose D because it was the best answer)

The first part of D (The government sometimes makes unsupported claims about what situations will arise) seems to indicate about the government claims that the nuclear power plants are entirely safe. However, second part of D (but it does not act to prevent a certain kind of situation from arising unless there is a real danger that such a situation will arise.) seems to talk about the bankruptcy due to nuclear accidents.

In other words, the situations in 1st part are nuclear accidents while the certain kind of situation in 2nd part is bankruptcy occurred by such accidents. Yes, such bankruptcy is related to nuclear accident since the former is caused by the latter but they are two different things. So the language of D seems to talk about the same thing(situation) but when applies it to the argument, it is basically saying two different things. (nuclear accidents and bankruptcy)

Can anyone clarify the language of (D) more specifically? I am totally confused with it.