LSAT Question Explanation
PT 105, Section 4, Question 16
StrengthenArgument structure
Forensic science in general is not at fault for the error in the court case.
Some of the forensic scientists involved with the Barker case were biased towards the prosecution, and did not provide impartial evidence.
Explanation
This is a seriously flawed argument. The author says that forensic science in general shouldn't be blamed for a miscarriage of justice and their evidence is that forensic scientists were at fault?!
The author seems to be assuming that other forensic scientists who didn't cause the error in the case do a good job, and that the field overall is not problematic. We can strengthen that forensic science in general is not at fault by backing up the author's assumption with some evidence that other forensic scientists are not biased, provide impartial evidence, and/or just generally do a good job.
Answer choices
This strengthens that the field of forensic science in general is not problematic, it was just a few bad apples in this case.
This seems to potentially weaken the argument, depending on how frequently it happens. If forensic scientists are messing up or acting with bias repeatedly across multiple cases, the field may be problematic.
This doesn't do anything, because it doesn't tell us if the field of forensic science generally does a good job.
This doesn't affect the conclusion. It just tells us that other types of injustice also happen. We don't know if they're related to forensic science.
The fact that some forensic scientists think this wasn't problematic doesn't tell us much. And if all or the vast majority of forensic scientists felt this way that could actually indicate that the field is problematic, weakening the argument.