Q16 - Publicity campaigns for endangered species

[geverett]

Some tricky wrong answer choices on this one. Here's the breakdown:

Conclusion: Campaigns to raise awareness for endangered species will likely not have much of an impact on the most important environmental problems,

Evidence: It's easy to get people interested in campaigns involving "large mammals" because of the sympathy people feel towards them, but it is much more challenging to get people involved in campaigns with a larger potential impact such as preserving soil micro-organisms on which large ecosystems and agriculture depends. People just don't feel much sympathy for soil micro-organisms like they do for large mammals.

Question: What is a necessary assumption that this argument relies on.

Prephrase: Okay I need to find the gaps that exist in the logic.

The first one I can see is that campaigns to raise awareness which evoke sympathy for endangered large mammals are not likely to have much impact on the most important environmental problems.

The second gap I see is that the state of soil microorganisms (or other organisms on which large ecosystems and agriculture depend) has an impact on the most important environmental problems.

I go to the questions with this in mind.

(A) This addresses the first gap I mentioned above. If you negated this statement it would read: "The most important environmental problems do not involve animals other than large mammals." If that were the case then this argument would be completely invalid, because publicity campaigns to raise awareness about endangered large mammals would impact the most important environmental problems. Winner!
(B) Who cares? This is irrelevant to the argument in the stimulus. There is nothing about "experiencing pain" or "having feelings" in this argument. Get rid of this.
(C) "Publicity campaigns . . . are the most effective" In order to even be able to work with this answer choice one would need to know what is meant by "most effective". "Most effective" could mean the amount of money raised by the publicity campaign or it could mean the size of the environmental problem it would help solve. Based on this answer choice, we just can't tell. Also the answer choice says "some organism" which it too ambiguous of a term. Some could mean a number as small as one in which case it could not be inferred that a publicity campaign which elicits sympathy for one organism would be most effective. The reason being is that this one organism could be a large mammal, the soil microorganism, or an organism not mentioned in the stimulus in which case the effectiveness of the campaign could definitely not be ascertained.
(D) "People ignore environmental problems. . ." This cannot be inferred. We know that publicity campaigns which evoke sympathy for large mammals are unlikely to have much impact on the most important environmental problems, but we cannot assume that just because people are more easily persuaded to become involved in campaigns involving large animals (campaigns which are unlikely to have much impact on the most important environmental problems) that they therefore ignore all other environmental problems. Remember the scope of this argument is limited to the most important environmental problems, and this answer choice is trying to make you believe something about all environmental problems. Get rid of it.
(E) "environmentally significant" This also cannot be inferred based on the information in the stimulus. Remember, this argument references "the most important environmental problems. Just because an organism does not impact the "most important environmental problems" does not mean that it is not "environmentally significant". The word significant is intentionally ambiguous here, and could include the "most important environmental problems", but could also include some environmental problems that are important but not necessarily the "most important". Get rid of this answer choice.

[Dmitriy.Oziransky]

Would C also be wrong because even if publicity campaigns are not most effective they can still be effective?

[shodges]

What threw me off about A is that I didn't see why it had to specifically be "ENDANGERED" species instead of really any species. The stimulus never directly says that the soil microorganism etc need to actually be endangered to matter. Was that just implicit?


Still, the denial test should have shown me. I marked it off too fast though.

[schwingrocker]

Would D address a gap if the logic had been reversed and it had said "If people sympathize with certain creatures they will act on envioenmental problems concerning these creatures" ?

[esnanees]

Think i have spent two days on this qt. I get why the negation test of ans choice A will render the argument invalid but isn't the ans choice too extreme to qualify as a necessary assumption?

I was expecting an answer choice like this: " The most important environmental problems involve endangered species which are soil microorganisms other than large mammals".
Doesn't A omit the fact that large mammals are not endangered species? Please help me with what i am missing.

[maryadkins]

Great explanation!

Would C also be wrong because even if publicity campaigns are not most effective they can still be effective?

Yes. Even if they weren't most effective, they could theoretically still have an impact.

Would D address a gap if the logic had been reversed and it had said "If people sympathize with certain creatures they will act on envioenmental problems concerning these creatures" ?

No. Because the gap here is the assumption that the most important problems involve creatures that cannot be sympathized with. As noted in the discussion below, we don't need to make an assumption about all environmental problems, just the most important ones.

Think i have spent two days on this qt. I get why the negation test of ans choice A will render the argument invalid but isn't the ans choice too extreme to qualify as a necessary assumption?

All that matters is that negating it invalidates the argument. There is no "it's too extreme" to be a necessary assumption answer; if it's not stated, and if negating it destroys the argument, it's a necessary assumption. Looking for extreme language is a method to use in navigating toward the right answer, but it's not a test for what's necessary and what isn't.

[WaltGrace1983]

When I get a question like this in which there are some really tempting answer choices, I try to correct the wrong answers. How do these sound?

(C) "Publicity campaigns for the most important environmental problems are effective only when they elicit sympathy from some organism"

IF it is true that publicity campaigns are ALSO effective WITHOUT the sympathy component (the negation of the answer choice above), then it makes the premises not lead to the conclusion. We would see the premises and say, "so what? Why is sympathy talked about here? We know that sympathy may be sufficient but not exactly necessary."

I could be wrong, but I also think the "most important" component to the right answer is critical. We aren't talking about environmental problems in the abstract - we are talking about SPECIFIC environmental problems. If we would have omitted the "most important" part above, then this would be too broad of a scope for the right answer.

(D) People don't impact some environmental problems unless they believe the problems will affect creatures with which they sympathize.

The problem with (D), unless I am mistaken, is that "ignore" is much too strong. We don't NEED to say anything about total ignorance. The conclusion was simply about making an impact. I fixed that here.

(B) and (E) are much too far off. They are completely out of scope.

How do those corrections look?

[maryadkins]

Close, not quite. Good attempt, though.

(C) "Publicity campaigns for the most important environmental problems are effective only when they elicit sympathy from some organism"

I think this one looks pretty good, although I'm still not sure being an effective publicity campaign is the same as environmental impact. Maybe an effective PR campaign just gets the word out. But it's better as you wrote it, and arguably it would work if we accept that term shift.

(D) People don't impact some environmental problems unless they believe the problems will affect creatures with which they sympathize.

If we negated this, it would read, "People impact some environmental problems even if they don't sympathize." That doesn't destroy the argument. Maybe if we said, "There can be no impact on the most important environmental problems unless people sympathize with the creatures affected by those problems."

[WaltGrace1983]

Close, not quite. Good attempt, though.

(C) "Publicity campaigns for the most important environmental problems are effective only when they elicit sympathy from some organism"

I think this one looks pretty good, although I'm still not sure being an effective publicity campaign is the same as environmental impact. Maybe an effective PR campaign just gets the word out. But it's better as you wrote it, and arguably it would work if we accept that term shift.

(D) People don't impact some environmental problems unless they believe the problems will affect creatures with which they sympathize.

If we negated this, it would read, "People impact some environmental problems even if they don't sympathize." That doesn't destroy the argument. Maybe if we said, "There can be no impact on the most important environmental problems unless people sympathize with the creatures affected by those problems."

Ah I definitely messed up the wording on that second one! Thanks for catching me. I meant to say that but, as you can tell, I shouldn't be hired by LSAC to write correct answers I suppose

[Mab6q]

I want to add my two cents on this one simply to illustrate the importance of being flexible when negating.

Let's look at the correct answer choice A negated. This is what the purest negation would look like:

It is not necessarily the case that most important environmental problems involve endangered other than large animals.

This tells us the most important problems might have large mammals, but it also tells us that they might have the other species as well. And if such species can't have sympathy evoked for them, they the argument still holds. So, A doesn't completely destroy the argument, but it opens it up to criticism.

Let me also add this for D: I don't think D is wrong because of a env problems vs. most important env problems issue. As was stated above, it makes more sense to say ignoring does not mean the problem will not be solved.

One of the gaps is that ~sympathy --> ~impact on most important problem.

Ignore does not meet our necessary assumption.

[BarryM800]

In this argument, the conclusion is supported by only one premise. Specifically, publicity campaigns are unlikely to have much impact on the most important environmental problems, because it is more difficult to sympathize with other kinds of organisms than with large mammals. So I pre-phrased the assumption as: The most important environmental problems involve endangered species (in conclusion)/organisms (in premise)/creatures (in D) that are more difficult to sympathize with than large mammals.

Thus, (D) looks pretty attractive to me. Basically, it states "if people can't sympathize with the creature, then they would ignore it." If people ignore it, then it's not much of a jump to say it's unlikely to have much impact on it, since "ignoring," by definition, means not doing anything about it - no impact.

The issues I have with (A) are: (1) I mistakenly interpreted "endangered species other than large mammals" as "non-large mammals," but the premise clearly talks about non-mammals, e.g., soil microorganisms; and (2) it does not include the essence of the premise, which is the element of "sympathy." Any thoughts? Thanks!

[Misti Duvall]

In this argument, the conclusion is supported by only one premise. Specifically, publicity campaigns are unlikely to have much impact on the most important environmental problems, because it is more difficult to sympathize with other kinds of organisms than with large mammals. So I pre-phrased the assumption as: The most important environmental problems involve endangered species (in conclusion)/organisms (in premise)/creatures (in D) that are more difficult to sympathize with than large mammals.

Thus, (D) looks pretty attractive to me. Basically, it states "if people can't sympathize with the creature, then they would ignore it." If people ignore it, then it's not much of a jump to say it's unlikely to have much impact on it, since "ignoring," by definition, means not doing anything about it - no impact.

The issues I have with (A) are: (1) I mistakenly interpreted "endangered species other than large mammals" as "non-large mammals," but the premise clearly talks about non-mammals, e.g., soil microorganisms; and (2) it does not include the essence of the premise, which is the element of "sympathy." Any thoughts? Thanks!

Hi Barry! Necessary assumption question are SO MUCH easier if you use the negation test. For answer choice (D), see maryadkin's response above.

(A) negates to "The most important environmental problems do not involve endangered species other than large mammals." This destroys the argument, because if the biggest problems don't involve the species for which eliciting sympathy is difficult, the conclusion doesn't follow.