Logical reasoning PrepTest 130 · Section 1 · Question 15

Incorrect. While most research is funded by the government, we don't know that that research is as likely to yield advances as the research funded by corporations. Maybe corporations fund the research most likely to lead to advances, and the government funds the (majority) of research that is less promising.

Incorrect. Similar to (A), we don't know how frequent it is that research leads to advances. It's possible that only 10% of research projects end up successfully finding a scientific advance, and so it's unsupported to say that "most" research leads to such an advance.

Incorrect. While it's true that corporations fund some genetic research, and some genetic research leads to advances, we can't make an inference that those groups overlap. Two some statements never lead to an inference.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Must Be True

Stimulus Summary:

(1) Genetic research advance-most-Ethical dilemmas
(2) Genetic research-most-Funded by government
(3) Funded by government → Funded by corporations
(4) Genetic research → Funded by government OR Funded by corporations

Answer Anticipation:
First, note that the last sentence just repeats the preceding statement—if anything not funded by the government is funded by corporations, then all research is funded by one or the other. However, having both versions written out may make it easier to find an inference, so we diagrammed them both.

With that said, while there are several conditionals and quantified statements, there isn't a lot of overlap that leads to clear inferences. The only clear inference would come from combining statements 2 and 4, but that would say that some research funded by the government is funded by the government or funded by corporations—hardly a revelation. Without a clear inference to be made through combining these statements, we should head straight to the answer choices to see if we can find something that combines a few of these statements in non-traditional but still valid ways.

Answer Explanation:
There can't be an advance in genetic research without genetic research, and funding from either the government or a corporation is necessary for any genetic research. Therefore, any ethical dilemmas that arise from these advances must have funding from the government or corporations, thus supporting this answer choice.

Key Takeaway:
Not all Must Be True questions with conditionals and quantified statements will have straightforward inferences that can be drawn. Sometimes, it's best to head straight to the answers to start working through them if you don't see any combinations that you can make during your anticipation step.

Additionally, this question highlights a way that the LSAT can make things a bit more difficult—by including an implied premise in the logic. The stimulus never connects advances in genetic research to genetic research. However, it Must Be True that genetic research is done before there can be an advance in genetic research. That connection is necessary for the correct answer to hold.

Incorrect. Again, while the government may fund most genetic research, there's no guarantee in the stimulus that any of the government-funded research leads to advances, or that those advances are in the vast majority that lead to ethical dilemmas. Even if the government is funding some breakthroughs, maybe it always plays it safe and stays well on the side of research that has no ethical dilemmas.