June 2007, Section 2, #21 Question

Hey Gator - I had a lot of help from people on different boards when I was studying for the LSAT and was fortunate enough to score a 178, so I thought I'd give back a bit and help out.

Question 21 is asking you to select an answer choice that describes a flaw in the author's reasoning. In other words, the correct answer choice will illustrate why the conclusion that the author makes may not be 100% correct/valid. So you should start by identifying the conclusion given in the stimulus. In this case, the conclusion is that switching from a sports car to a minivan would lower the author's risk of having an accident. Consider why the author believes that to be true: minivans and larger sedans have lower accident rates than sports cars. This is a common LSAT causal reasoning scenario, where an author observes some phenomenon/relationship (in this case the relationship between the minivans and the lower accident rates) and concludes that one thing actively made the other happen (here driving a minivan results in a reduced risk of having an accident). The forceful language used in the conclusion - doing something "would lower" - is a great indicator that causality is present, and is definitely an important thing to keep an eye out for on test day. Of course, the inverse relationship between minivans and risk of accidents does not guarantee that it is the minivans themselves that reduce the accident risk (particularly if the author is already prone to driving recklessly, as he/she admits in the first sentence), so the conclusion is questionable based on this presumed causality.

Since you know that you have a causal flaw in the stimulus, you should expect the correct answer to describe this flaw using causal language (words like "cause," "effect," "produced," etc.). Answer choice A does this perfectly and is correct: the author does indeed assume that a causal relationship exists between owning a minivan/sedan and lowering the risk of having an accident, when the evidence given does not necessarily prove that minivans are the reason for this trend. Note too the use of "cause" and "correlation," two common words associated with causal reasoning.

Answer choice D describes a conditional reasoning error where a sufficient condition is confused for a necessary condition, but since this stimulus contains causal reasoning, not conditional reasoning, answer choice D does not address the argumentation here. As a quick tip, conditional reasoning isn't typically associated with active, forceful relationships like the one here, but instead will be based off of one thing simply indicating the presence or absence of another in a consistent way. So with conditionality you often have an "if...then" type of situation, but without the indication that one condition made the other condition happen. When one thing is said to be the reason for another, as we see in this question, that is causality and recognizing that difference is really important on the LSAT.

I hope this helps and good luck with the studies!

Mitch