Q6 - After an oil spill

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Weaken (the Evidence)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: The effort to save sea otters by cleaning oil of them was not worthwhile.
Evidence: They counted 900 dead seals and 357 living but oily seals. The efforts only successfully saved 222 of those living but oily seals. That's only 18% of the affected seals we found (900 dead + 357 alive). And many more seals than that died, because only a fifth of dead seals were found. (the 900 dead ones found were 1/5 of the total dead ones)

Answer Anticipation:
If we were challenging the argument/reasoning, I would say things like, "Hey, saving 222 otters is still a WORTHWHILE effort". But this question stem is actually asking us to challenge (some of the) evidence offered. We normally accept the evidence on LSAT, but here we are supposed to actually push back against a premise. The most vulnerable claim is the last idea, that "only 1/5 of the otters that died were ever found". That seems like a sketchy statistic. If I came to your house and found only three marbles on the floor, how could I estimate what fraction of your total marbles that was?

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This is saying, "Are there other types of sea otters in other parts of the world that have nothing to do with this oil spill?" Sure … but that isn't attacking any of the author's evidence.

(B) Yes! This attacks the final idea in the evidence. If you only found 900 dead otters, how do you know that that's one fifth of the total dead ottters? Did you have some otter count beforehand that you're going off of? Even if you did know there were "x" number of sea otters to start with, the ones you haven't found could still be alive or dead. If you haven't found them dead, then how would you know whether they are?

(C) None of the evidence addresses healthy, unaffected otters, so the question of whether we accidentally trapped and released some could not be attacking any evidence offered.

(D) No evidence dealt with species besides sea otters.

(E) This would be pointed more at the conclusion, as to whether the efforts were "worthwhile". The evidence offered is purely about what puny proportion of the overall affected population of sea otters we were able to save. So the author's evidence (and potentially her conclusion) have nothing to do with money spent.

Takeaway/Pattern: Weird question task. It looks like a normal Weaken question, but it's asking us to challenge a piece of evidence (take one of the Premises head-on) rather than to challenge the reasoning "accept the evidence but dispute the move to the conclusion".

#officialexplanation

[pinkdatura]

about the oil spill and sea otter, I know ACDE are out of scope, could anybody explain why B is correct? I got a little bit confused about what'g going on in the stimulus.
so 357 affected +900 died, 222 were saved (18%), but the actually number would be lower if there are more death we didn't discover coz they didn't die immediately to be washed off the beach?
Correct me if I were wrong about the stimulus and pls explain to me about B, thx

[bbirdwell]

I'm not sure what you're saying about "washed off the beach."

The last point is the one that (B) addresses: "only a fifth of the otters that died immediately were ever found."

Think about that for a moment. How do we know how many there were if they were never found?

One thing that can help here is paying strict attention to the question: "call into question the evidence." As you said, A, C, D, and E are clearly out of scope.

[didi0504]

Can someone please explain this question and the answer choices?

I am a bit confused as to what I am looking for in the answer.

[irini101]

I have problems with the percentage and corresponding numbers int the stimulus: there is 900 died, how could the 222 survived acount for 18%?

Could any one explain the confusing numbers and percentage in the stimulus?

Thanks in advance!

[daniel.g.winter]

This was a strange question because you rarely see answer choices all in the form of questions. The numbers in the stimulus are also a little daunting to take and it's easy to get sidetracked and confused. I'll do my best to explain it.

So after a recent oil spill, rehabilitation centers were set up to save sea otters by removing oil from them. The argument concludes that this effort was not worthwhile, however. Why?
Because of the evidence it presents. It tells us that 357 affected live otters were counted, and 900 otters that had died were counted, bringing the total to 1257 otters counted. Of these, only 222 of the affected sea otters were successfully rehabilitated and survived. These 222 represent only 18% of the total number of otters counted, 1257. The stimulus tells us further that this percentage, 18, is actually much lower, because only some of the otters that died immediately were ever found. The argument is presuming that there are tons more other otters that died but were never found, raising the total number of otters counted and lowering the percentage of otters successfully rehabilitated.

For example, let's say the argument is correct, and there are actually 3600 more otters that had died but this time were all found (a fifth of 3600 is 900). Then, there would be a total of 4857 otters counted (all the dead ones and 357 lives ones). Then, the 222 that were successfully rehabilitated would represent a MUCH smaller percentage than 18%. From this, the argument concludes the whole rehabilitation effort was not worthwhile.

All of these numbers seem crazy, and I would NOT advocate doing any of these calculations on the test. I'm just trying to show you the flawed reasoning behind the argument.

Our task is to find a potential challenge that calls into question the evidence presented. B does the perfect job - how can we know the number of sea otters that died but weren't found? More specifically, how can the author say only a fifth of all dead otters have been found? How is it possible to know the number of total dead otters if many weren't even found at all? It makes no sense.

A is totally out of scope since we don't care about otters in areas not affected by the spill.

C gave me some pause but it ultimately has nothing do with the evidence of there being many more dead otters. Also out of scope.

D is wrong because we do not care at all about other species of animals.

E is wrong because the cost is out of scope. The argument is not saying the whole process was not worthwhile because of cost, but because of a low percentage of otters saved.

I hope this clears it up. Questions with numbers often seem challenging but even if you couldn't follow exactly where the author was going, using process of elimination on the answers would easily lead you to the correct answer since NONE of the other answers are even close.

[zainrizvi]

What type of question is this? I thought it was evaluate the argument but I don't really see an assumption being made

[bbirdwell]

It's a weaken question; specifically, a "weaken the evidence" question.

[panman36]

It's a weaken question; specifically, a "weaken the evidence" question.

Could anyone list some other questions that are like this? I feel like I've never seen a stem like this before and was way thrown off. What questions would even be close?

[bearknowsthetrooth]

If they're evaluating the effectiveness of rehabilitation centers, why does it matter how many immediately dead otters were found? Shouldn't the success rate be 222/357 (62%), which wouldn't change no matter how many immediately dead otters there are?

[FarOutsidetheBox]

I found this a very hard/strange question and got it right, so I'm posting my thoughts here.

The question makes an argument:
Premise: The effort saved some affected otters, but the vast majority died
Premise: Even more of them died than we think because only one fifth of the dead ones were found.

Conclusion: The effort was a waste of time.

Your mission: which question would WEAKEN the EVIDENCE in the argument?

(A), (C), and (D) are all irrelevant to both the evidence and the conclusion, so cross them off.

This leaves B and E. E is tempting because it could weaken the ARGUMENT. (What if each otter saved cost only one penny and took one second, would we really say that the effort was a waste?) But the question is asking specifically about weakening the EVIDENCE, and while cost/time may be implicit assumptions they aren't given as evidence.

That leaves us with B which fits perfectly. Part of the evidence was that there were thousands more dead otters. B questions this by saying: how do you know about these guys if they were never found? Therefore, it calls the evidence into question and is the correct response.

Hope that helps others!

[phil.ogea]

I think a lot of people in this thread are falling for the trap they set.

It is a weaken the evidence, and their evidence is all these numbers & statistics. When I first read it I said "wow, those statistics are set up really poorly" and predicted the answer would have something to do with how they said they saved only 18% instead of the 222/357 that they should of used.

But alas that wasn't an option so I had to settle for the less ideal, but still weakening (as explained by above posts), B.

[Mab6q]

I know the other ACs suck, but B clearly seems to be questioning the validity of a premise, and so it was easy to eliminate for me. The author tells us that only a fifth of the otters that died immediately were ever found, right? Why would the LSAT give us a question like this? I'm absolutely stumped.

[alyssachai2]

I know the other ACs suck, but B clearly seems to be questioning the validity of a premise, and so it was easy to eliminate for me. The author tells us that only a fifth of the otters that died immediately were ever found, right? Why would the LSAT give us a question like this? I'm absolutely stumped.

^ Agreed... How do we know that the speaker of the question doesn't have some sort of weird otter census data from before the oil spill??

[ohthatpatrick]

It's been said a few times on this thread, but it bears repeating:

Pay attention to the actual question stem ... they are ASKING us to Weaken/Attack the Premise (the Evidence).

I'm with ya -- that's weird and unusual. But we have to adapt to the question stem.

A normal Weaken question would ask us to Weaken the Argument/Reasoning
(where we get the sacrosanct rule of ACCEPT the premise, DISPUTE the move to the Conclusion)

The speaker MAY have some census data. Strengthen and Weaken ideas don't prove or refute anything. They just raise or reduce doubt.

But how would you have census data of "all the otters that died immediately"? Wouldn't you need to have found all those dead otters to know that they died immediately?

Census data would have given us a sense of how many otters were in the area around the time of the spill.

But when we find 1200 of them and see that 900 have died, how can we possibly estimate that another 3600 (the other 4/5 of that figure) have also died?

There may be legitimate answers for how the estimate was made, but (B) is still a worthy question.

The standard of correctness for this question stem is just, "IS this a skeptical question we should be asking about the evidence?"

Let us know if you think any of the other answer choices reflect a better way of attacking the evidence.

[mswang7]

Premises: 18%/222 otters survived (By math this means 1257 otters in the study but I cannot tie this number to anything)
900 dead found, otters, there were actually more dead otters that weren't found
357 alive oily
Concl: effort was not worthwhile
Gaps: What counts as worthwhile?

A. I don't see how see otter pop outside of the oil spill in question is relevant
B. At first I thought this was a premise booster but upon closer look I understand what this is saying - how do we know the 900 dead is only 1/5th of dead otters? Unless there was a pre-spill otter count
C. Out of scope - we only care about otter affected by the efforts
D. Out of scope - the effort was to save sea otters, not other animal, although this could play into a different definition of "worthwhile"
E. Out of scope unless you define cost as a part of worthwhileness

[HughM388]

Though (B) is pretty clearly the best answer of the lot, I want to say I vehemently disdain the use of the word "estimate" here. By enumerating a series of excruciatingly precise figures (357, 222, 18 percent, etc.), the person speaking in the stimulus is doing anything but estimating. In fact, this exactitude makes their claims about quantifying an unknowable number even more absurd.

Considering all that came before it in the stimulus, the word "estimate" itself is "out of scope," and it's either a mistake or it's an unctuous and illicit way to make the question harder.