Q8 - Environmentalist: When bacteria degrade

[ohthatpatrick]

You're correct on a fundamental level, but you're splitting hairs in a way that won't help you improve your LSAT score.

Just ask yourself on Necessary Assumption,
"Which answer, if negated, most weakens?"

Weaken answers don't have to be perfect. If we say to the author that "No landfills that have ever been converted into public parks have had any bacteria that degrade household cleaning products", then we have bodyslammed his argument.

Have we refuted it? No. But that's not the standard you're expected to hold NA answers to.

The idea that landfills in the past had no bacteria but nowadays landfills have bacteria is the sort of thing we are warned against doing at the beginning of an LR section. Read that blurb before Q1.

It says:
"You should not make assumptions that are by commonsense standards implausible, superfluous, or incompatible with the passage".

It's pretty implausible that when an author says the common practice of converting landfills to parks, he is ONLY speaking about the parks that are right-this-second being converted.

By indicting the "common practice", he can't really only be referring to present moment. If he's not referring to ones that have already been converted, then there ISN'T yet a common practice.

Hope this helps.

[SelinaJ858]

Hello! I had a really hard time with this question due to the wording of the answers. At first, I thought A was the best option but since it started off with "In at least some landfills..." I thought the "as least some" was not strong enough to guarantee the answer as a required/necessary assumption.
I would appreciate any clarity or advice on how to approach these types of tricky answer wording in the future, thank you!

[Laura Damone]

"At least some" is actually EXACTLY the strength you should be looking for in a Necessary Assumption question. Here's a quick-and-dirty breakdown of language strength and the question types it impacts.

Strong language bad / Weak language good
- Necessary Assumption
- Most Strongly Supported (Inference)

Weak language bad / Strong language good
- Sufficient Assumption
- Strengthen
- Weaken
- Explain a Result

Strength of the answer must match strength of the stimulus
- Must Be True
- ID the Conclusion
- Match the Reasoning
- ID the (Dis)Agreement

Hope this helps!