Q3 - A recent survey quizzed journalism students

[ohthatpatrick]

Here's a quick analogy:

A recent survey quizzed members of the Democratic National Committee about how President Obama's 2nd term was faring. More than 90% of them offered very positive reviews. This indicates that recent polls showing that 50% of people have negative reviews of Obama's performance are incorrect.

What's the flaw?

If you ask people whose central interest in life is supporting the Democratic Party how the leader of the Democratic Party is doing, you're going to get a biased answer. You should not generalize THOSE people's tastes to the public at large.

Similarly, journalism students are people who are training to one day write stories "dealing with serious governmental and political issues", so of course THEY prefer those types of stories to celebrity magazines.

That's why (C) is the correct answer.

== other answers ==

(A) This answer choice describes the famous Correlation->Causality type flaw, but there is nothing causal in the original argument.

(B) This answer also describes causality. "The production of an effect" is just saying "X caused Y". This answer is saying, "Just because X caused Y, you can't assume that X definitely intended to cause Y." That doesn't match our argument at all.

(D) Ugh. What awesome wording. Let's break it up: who's likely to reject the argument's conclusion?

I guess publishers would reject it. The conclusion is essentially saying, "Publishing trends are NOT tapped into the pulse of the public." So if anyone was going to reject that, it would be publishers or others who believe the current publishing trends DO represent public preference.

Did the argument employ language that unfairly represented publishers or unfairly represented people who believe current trends are good barometers of public preference?

Not that I can see. The closest thing would be to say that "gossip" is somehow an unfair smear on celebrity news. But even that wouldn't represent a "reasoning" flaw.

(E) There's not really any hypothesis here. The conclusion strongly believes that modern publishing trends are off base ... even if we allowed that to be called "a hypothesis treated as fact", this answer would be wrong for saying that it is "admittedly unsupported". There is definitely support for the conclusion: the recent survey of journalists.

(I think LSAT thought people would match up 'admittedly unsupported' with 'false assumptions')

2 things might still be nagging you about this question:

1. How can LSAT expect me to have the outside knowledge that journalism students prefer hard-hitting, real-life-and-consequences type stuff to easy, breezy, fashion/celebrity stuff?

Early on in LR sections, the questions frequently appeal to outside knowledge and common sense. Furthermore, (C) is still the only answer that matches the argument. It is true no matter what that the evidence was a survey of journalists, which is presumably not a representative sample of "the public", on whose behalf the conclusion speaks.

2. Wasn't there also a big assumption that "today's trends in publishing assume that the public is more interested in lifestyle trends and celebrity gossip"?

Yes! Flaw questions can contain several flaws. As the question stem allows for, it says describe a flaw in the reasoning.

Hope this helps.
#officialexplanation

[nn2009]

Could anyone shed some light on this question, please? Thanks.