Q17 - The conventional view is that

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Strengthen (the claim, not the argument, in case that matters)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Asteroids strike Earth through an organized natural process.
Evidence: A halo-like swath across the N. Hemisphere that appeared at the end of the Cretaceous period.

Answer Anticipation:
I guess she's assuming that "halo-like swath of impact craters" somehow indicates "highly organized natural process".

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) We don't care what caused mass extinctions; we're only evaluating whether asteroids strike randomly or whether there's a natural process that governs it.

(B) This has nothing to do with whether impacts are random or organized.

(C) Maybe. Is 'single cluster' indicative or ORGANIZED, not RANDOM? Is it indicative of "a highly organized natural process"? Not really. A single cluster of meteors could easily have broken off an asteroid by some random impact with another asteroid.

(D) Yes! This sounds like asteroid impacts ARE governed by some natural process (sucked by gravity into specific orbits before impact).

(E) If anything, this would weaken the use of the halo-swath as evidence of an organized, natural process. Something that happened only once sounds more RANDOM than ORGANIZED.

Takeaway/Pattern: Ahhh, so it DID matter that the question stem said 'claim', not 'argument/reasoning'. The geophysicist DID present evidence for her claim, i.e. she DID present an argument, but the correct answer is only related to the conclusion, the geophysist's claim. The halo-swath piece of evidence just gave LSAT some fodder for making trap answers.

#officialexplanation

[shirando21]

I seem to have difficulty understanding topic like this.

This is a strengthen question.

The iconoclastic geophysicist's claim/conclusion is:

Asteroids have struck the earth through a highly organized natural process.

Premise/Evidence for his conclusion:

the unusual pattern of impact craters


I have no idea how D is related to the argument and strengthens it...

I'd appreciate it very much if anyone can help to explain.

[rinagoldfield]

Shirando21, great breakdown of the argument core.

The iconoclastic geophysicist's claim/conclusion is:

Asteroids have struck the earth through a highly organized natural process.

Premise/Evidence for his conclusion:

the unusual pattern of impact craters

In all strengthen questions, we are looking for the answer choice that helps us bridge the gap between the premise and the conclusion. In this case, we want to connect the unusual pattern of impact craters found in the Northern Hemisphere to asteroids striking in an "organized natural process."

Don’t get distracted by extraneous information! All that stuff about mass extinctions and the Cretaceous period is irrelevant to the core.

(D) strengthens the argument by suggesting a process by which asteroid strikes might be organized. If the gravity of lumpen earth-masses forces asteroids into specific orbits prior to impact, then asteroid strikes are not random. Rather, gravity organizes them. We can connect the "halo-like" shape of the patterned craters in the Northern Hemisphere to the shape of an orbit.

Neither (A) nor (B) relate to the conclusion. They don’t address how asteroid impacts might be organized. Eliminate them as irrelevant to the argument core.

(C) is trickier, since it deals with how the impact craters might have been formed. However, knowing that a single cluster of meteors created the Northern Hemisphere craters doesn’t bring us any closer to the conclusion. Was the craters’ pattern organized or random? (C) doesn’t give us a clue.

(E) is out of scope. We need to connect the Northern Hemisphere craters to an organized system of asteroid strikes. Craters from other periods of history are extraneous to the argument core.
(E) might appear to weaken the geophysicist’s argument, since it seems to suggest that the geophysicist only has one piece of evidence to support his claim. However, this answer choice only tells us that "no similar pattern of impact craters" has been found. Maybe other kinds of patterns abound.
Regardless, (E) certainly doesn’t strengthen. Eliminate this answer choice.

[ttunden]

yeah you have to connect the gap between the halo swath across northern hemisphere and the organized natural process

the sentence at the end(There is a consensus...) is just irrelevant information.

D connects the gap since it shows how the halo is an organized natural process.

[851869412]

I choose (C) because I think in the stimulus, the craters across the Northern Hemisphere may or may not be formed by asteriods strike. If the craters were formed by, for example, wind forces, the argument does not make any sense at all.

So, I think if we could know for sure that the craters were the result of any kinds of asteroids, the argument would be strengthened. (C) says exactly the same thing.

Is there any parts that I misunderstood?

[seychelles1718]

I think E is out not because it is out of scope but because it is a premise booster that has no impact on the conclusion. The stimulus says the pattern is unusual. E reinforces the unusualness of the pattern. Am I right?

[ohthatpatrick]

Correct. (E) is doing nothing to convince us that "the halo of impacts" happened through a highly organized natural process.

If anything, the fact that the pattern has never occurred again makes it LESS likely that it's the result of a highly organized natural process.

[ltownsjr]

I know you guys don't reply to non students, but hopefully someone will be able to chime in on this. It seems like ohathapatrick and rinagofield give two different methods in solving this problem that seem to be in contradiction??? I've understood that you're suppose to look for the assumption which is found through the premise and conclusion in any strengthen/weaken question (as rinagofield suggests) , however in the initial post othapatrick is basically saying the premise is a smoke screen because of the question stem. I will most certainly admit it's hard for me to understand how you get to (D) in this question (and in some others) by simply finding the assumption because (D) doesn't seem to address the reasoning. I hope I've made myself clear. Thanks for any information given in response to my question.

[KatiaK713]

Hi,
There is a typo in the very first post (MP's explanation). Correct answer is D, not C.

[ohthatpatrick]

To respond to the previous poster who was asking about my method vs. Rina's ....

They aren't contradictory methods, per se. 99% of all Strengthen/Weaken questions ask us to help/hurt the author's
ARGUMENT or REASONING

but a small minority say to support/undermine a
CLAIM or HYPOTHESIS

When it's the latter, there may or may not be a premise, and the correct answer may or may not deal with premise. I was just nerding out on the fact that this question stem asked about strengthening the CLAIM and it seemed to me like the correct answer had more to do with strengthening the conclusion than it did connecting the premise to the conclusion.

[DPCTE4325]

To respond to the previous poster who was asking about my method vs. Rina's ....

They aren't contradictory methods, per se. 99% of all Strengthen/Weaken questions ask us to help/hurt the author's
ARGUMENT or REASONING

but a small minority say to support/undermine a
CLAIM or HYPOTHESIS

When it's the latter, there may or may not be a premise, and the correct answer may or may not deal with premise. I was just nerding out on the fact that this question stem asked about strengthening the CLAIM and it seemed to me like the correct answer had more to do with strengthening the conclusion than it did connecting the premise to the conclusion.

Hey Patrick!

So I identified causality in this argument and approached it via your two-pronged approach.

Curious Fact: Why is it that there's an unusual pattern of impact craters that form a halo swath?

Author's Story: It's due to a highly organized natural process

1) Rule out an alternate explanation / decrease plausibility of alternate explanation
2) Increase Author's Plausibility

Is answer choice D doing #2? D makes it MORE plausible that the Author's Story is right. If gravitational interactions forces the asteroids into specific orbits, then this seems to count as a highly organized, structural, and natural process.

Whereas C is wrong because you'd have to ASSUME that a single cluster of meteor strikes is somehow highly organized?

[ohthatpatrick]

Almost. Everything you said seemed right except for how you're thinking of (C).


Why is there this halo-like swatch of impact craters?
according to this geophysicist, it's because there's a highly organized natural process that governs where asteroids strike the earth. She believes that asteroids are NOT striking at random locations ... that something guides them to a natural impact zone.

So she interprets the halo-like swath of impact craters as evidence that some natural process is guiding different asteroids towards the same general impact zone.

(D) provides a causal mechanism by which that could happen, increasing the theory's plausibility.

(C) weakens the geo's argument, because it provides a different explanation for the halo-like swatch: "it wasn't caused by lots of different asteroids being guided to the same impact zone via some natural process .... it was caused by a single cluster of meteors that struck Earth at a random location ... we just see a swatch of craters near each other because wherever the cluster hit the earth there would be a bunch of craters near each other."

Hope this helps

[HughM388]

Who is, or was, the superstitious weirdo at LSAC sneaking intimations of the supernatural into LSAT questions involving asteroids? We see it here in an external force organizing lumpy protuberances on the earth's surface (for if these lumpy masses are not themselves organized then their positions are random, and the asteroid strikes are accordingly random, and not organized), and in another question on another test that implied supernatural forces as the cause of asteroid impacts—"no known natural phenomena could be responsible for the pattern…."

Very spooky.