Question #585

A vs. D

Started by Bhavraj · started 2019-08-28 17:12 · last activity 2019-08-28 18:56 · 1 reply

While it is clear to me why B,C, and E do not weaken the argument, I was having a bit of trouble fully understanding the justification for A and was wondering if my reasoning for ruling out D is correct. The conclusion of the passage states that this new policy of disclosing the statistics and additional information about the fines for safety violations will undermine the government's goal of making the public more informed as the airlines are not likely to give "complete" reports. A) states the incomplete reports still provide important information about the airline safety, but wouldn't an incomplete report potentially be misleading? It could alter a person's likelihood of travelling with that specific airline since if they perceive the airline to be safer than it truly is. Thus not really being valuable information at all. Also D) I chose this answer choice because since the government has required the publishing of the airline statistics and nowhere is it specifically stated that the airlines are required to publish the statistics themselves, that the potential flaw could have been that the argument is assuming the responsibility lies on the airlines without clearly stating it. Therefore the government could have taken the responsibility of publishing the statistics to ensure that they would not be manipulated by the airlines themselves. For D, I assumed it is false on the basis that it would nearly impossible and a waste of resources for the government to publish stats for ALL airlines when each airline could produce their own statistics which is by far the more efficient process. And for A I guess my question is how can we assume that an incomplete report is still beneficial and not misleading or giving the passengers a false sense of the safety of the airline?

Replies

  1. Victoria · 2019-08-28 18:56

    Hi @Bhavraj, Happy to help! The argument concludes that disclosure of airline statistics "undermines the government's goal of making the public more informed about airline safety." Why? Because "airlines will be much less likely to give complete reports if such information will be made available to the public." The flaw in reasoning here is the assumption that the release of incomplete reports will not allow the public to become more informed about airline safety. What if the reason that the government adopted the policy is that airlines were previously not publishing any public information about safety? In this case, even the release of an incomplete report would make the public more informed as they previously did not have access to any information. D is incorrect because the argument does not presume that airlines should be held responsible for accurate reporting. Firstly, the argument does not discuss who should be responsible for the reporting of airline statistics; the passage is focused on the airlines' release of information and the public's understanding of airline safety. Second, the passage is focused on "complete" reporting, not "accurate" reporting. Keep an eye out for subtle changes in wording in answer choices as the LSAT will sometimes include these to trick you into selecting an incorrect answer. Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any further questions.

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