LSAT Question Explanation
PT 108, Section 2, Question 6
Identify the FlawArgument structure
A majority of people in the country do not favor more investment in information technologies.
A survey concluded that most people do favor more investment in information technologies, but some of the data in the study was falsified.
Explanation
The survey in the stimulus is clearly flawed and should not be trusted. But we can't conclude that the opposite of the survey result is true. For all we know, even with the falsified data, a majority of people do favor more investment in information technologies.
A proper conclusion based on the evidence here could be something like "the survey is invalid, can't be trusted, and a new one should be undertaken." The author makes the mistake of going too far and actually making a conclusion about what the majority of people prefer without data to back it up.
Answer choices
The author does fail to consider this. Just because the survey was conducted improperly doesn't mean that it didn't still get to the right conclusion.
It doesn't matter if the public accepts the survey, the argument is just concluding that the survey result was incorrect. The public could mistakenly accept something that's incorrect.
This doesn't address whether or not the result of the survey in the stimulus is correct.
This reinforces that we can't trust the survey because it wasn't conducted properly, but doesn't tell us whether or not it came to the correct conclusion.
This may be true, but the survey is about people's opinions right now. So this answer choice doesn't affect the argument.