Q12 - Several legislators claim that the public finds

[jionggangtu]

I was able to narrow the answer down to D and E

But why is D better than E?

Can anyone help? Many thanks.

[ohthatpatrick]

Flaw answer choices often have a 2 part thought process to them:

1. Did the author really do this?

2. Is this a logical reasoning problem with how the author moved from premise to the conclusion?

For (D), did the author really generalize from a potentially atypical sample? Yes. Certainly surveying movie industry specialists is not the best way to get the "man on the street" evidence of public opinion.

Is this a logical reasoning problem relating to the move from premise to conclusion?

Yes. The conclusion is that "legislators have misrepresented public opinion"
why?
Premise: a survey done by a movie industry guild found that ....

Big ol' assumption: movie industry guild accurately represents public opinion?

For (E), did the author really assume that the movie guild survey respondents based their responses on a random sampling of movies?

Hmmm. You can't easily point to anything in the argument where our author is assuming that. Let's try the Negation Test -- if the respondents DIDN'T base their responses on a random sampling, would that kill the argument? Not necessarily ... maybe a non-random sampling would underrepresent violence ... maybe a non-random sampling would overrepresent violence.

Also, the legislators' claim is that "the public finds many current movies so violent ..." and we know that the survey found that "only 3% found any recent movie morally offensive".

Current movies and recent movies seem to be addressing the same sample of movies.

Even if we let (E) squeak by our first Flaw question with a "kinda ....", is this a logical reasoning problem relating to the move from premise to conclusion?

Not in this case. Even though it's often a good idea on LSAT to question whether a survey is based on random/representative sampling, our primary concern in this argument is that the MOVIE GUILD RESPONDENTS are an unrepresentative sampling of PUBLIC OPINION, not that the movies they watched are (for no apparent reason) an unrepresentative sampling of the movies watched by the public.

Even though it's technically possible that the movies sampled were a distorted sample, we don't have the textual ammunition in front of us to make that leap. Meanwhile, we know these movie industry specialists are not a generic sample of public opinion.

Hope this helps.

[manleytristan]

I think the above poster didn't actually get what the flaw in the argument was. The argument states that a movie industry guild conducted a survey, hence it is not them that takes the survey, and the argument never actually states who took the survey. Therefore the reasoning that argument is flawed because industry analysts took the survey is incorrect. The reason that D is correct is because of the last sentence in the stimulus where it states that those surveyed see way more movies on average than the average moviegoer, which means that they probably aren't a good representation of "the public." This is exactly what answer choice D describes. E is incorrect because there is no indication that there wouldn't be a random sampling of movies, although in a harder flaw question, this may have been the right answer if D wasn't there. On the lsat, unless there is a clear indication that a survey is flawed, one must usually assume that it was conducted correctly according to its goals.

[nja21]

E is incorrect because there was no such presumption. People who were surveyed do not need to base their responses on a random sampling of movies. It is the people who must have been randomly selected which of course was not carried out and hence D is correct.

[WaltGrace1983]

I thought this one was pretty tough too so I'll run through it.

Movie industry guild survey says that 17% think movies are overly violent / 3% think movies are morally offensive
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It is not true that the "public finds many current movies so violent as to be morally offensive"

One thing that jumped out at me was that this survey might not be representative, not necessarily because of WHO took it but WHO conducted the survey. We are talking about a survey given by the movie industry guild, don't its members have a lot to lose with a bad survey?

(A) This doesn't happen.

(B) But is there really objective criterion?

(C) We don't need to over-step the conclusion.

(E) One thing about this one is that it assumes that the public also sees a random sampling of movies. The conclusion is NOT: "Movies are in general not overly violent/offensive." Instead, the conclusion IS: "The public doesn't find current movies overly violent/offensive."

Also, I think something tricky about (E) is that we often associate "random" with "representative," which isn't necessarily true. The question wouldn't be "were the movies watched random?" Instead, it would be "were the movies watched representative?"

So yea, (E) is tough. But (D) gets at this representative problem.

[roflcoptersoisoi]

Premise: A survey conducted by a movie industry guild shows that only 17 percent of respondents though that movies are overly violent, 3 percent found that they were morally offensive.
Conclusion: The legislatures have misrepresented public opinion

Flaw: Presumes that the survey data is represented and reflects public opinion.

(A) Descriptively inaccurate, the author does not use an ad hominem attack.
(B) Descriptively inaccurate, the conclusion is not predicated on subjective judgements but on empirical facts.
(C) Descriptively accurate but is not a flaw in the argument. Antisocial behaviour is not even mentioned in the argument.
(D) Bingo.
(E) Descriptively inaccurate, the author assumes no such thing? How do I know? Negate this answer choice and see if destroys the argument. It doesn't. Even if we presumed that random sample equated to a representative sampling of the movies, the author presumes that the people surveyed were representative of the public, not the movies on which the people based their responses.