Exam LSAT Section 1 Logical Reasoning topic 1 question 234 discussion

Actual exam question from Test Prep's LSAT Section 1 Logical Reasoning

Question #: 234
Topic #: 1

[All LSAT Section 1 Logical Reasoning Questions]

One of the most vexing problems in historiography is dating an event when the usual sources offer conflicting chronologies of the event. Historians should attempt to minimize the number of competing sources, perhaps by eliminating the less credible ones. Once this is achieved and several sources are left, as often happens, historians may try, though on occasion unsuccessfully, to determine independently of the usual sources which date is more likely to be right.
Which one of the following inferences is most strongly supported by the information above?

A. We have no plausible chronology of most of the events for which attempts have been made by historians to determine the right date.
B. Some of the events for which there are conflicting chronologies and for which attempts have been made by historians to determine the right date cannot be dated reliably by historians.
C. Attaching a reliable date to any event requires determining which of several conflicting chronologies is most likely to be true.
D. Determining independently of the usual sources which of several conflicting chronologies is more likely to be right is an ineffective way of dating events.
E. The soundest approach to dating an event for which the usual sources give conflicting chronologies is to undermine the credibility of as many of these sources as possible.

Show Suggested Answer

Suggested Answer: B 🗳️
Next up is another Inference question. Theres nothing particularly concrete that jumps off the page, nor is there any kind of formal logic to speak of, so our best bet is to get the overall gist and then hit the choices. The topic is "historiography and you shouldn’t get alarmed if you don’t have a precise definition at your fingertips. Thats not necessary; we learn soon enough that the author is simply concerned with how historians date events. When there are multiple sources with conflicting accounts of when something happened, the author suggests narrowing down the field by chopping off the sources that are least credible. If there are still a number of sources remaining, historians should set them aside and determine themselves which date seems most plausible. This, however, doesnt always work.

by [deleted] at March 9, 2025, 1:35 p.m.

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