LSAT 14 – Section 2 – Question 21
LSAT 14 - Section 2 - Question 21
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| Question QuickView |
Type | Tags | Answer Choices |
Curve | Question Difficulty |
Psg/Game/S Difficulty |
Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PT14 S2 Q21 |
+LR
| Weaken +Weak | A
64%
167
B
3%
156
C
18%
162
D
9%
160
E
7%
160
|
149 159 169 |
+Harder | 148.522 +SubsectionMedium |
This is a weakening question: Which one of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the conclusion above?
Our stimulus begins by telling us that surgery was restricted to emergencies only following a relatively high mortality rate in area hospitals. Sounds like a smart decision! It seems the plan worked, and deaths fell by almost a third during the period of restriction. Unfortunately however, when non-emergency surgeries were allowed to resume, the death rate rose again. From all of this the argument concludes that the risks of elective (i.e non-emergency) surgery had been often unnecessarily incurred in the area. In other words, people were risking their lives in surgeries that they didn’t really need. We should notice that although our support does give us good evidence that people were dying, we haven’t established whether or not these risks were necessary. We are assuming that just because a surgery wasn’t an emergency, well then it wasn’t a necessary risk. Our job on this question is to weaken this conclusion that the deaths were due to unnecessary surgeries. Let’s see what our answers have to offer:
Correct Answer Choice (A) This weakens the conclusion by assigning a reason for the elective surgeries which would make possible mortality a necessary risk even if the surgery wasn’t an outright emergency. Sure these weren’t car accident victims who were going to immediately die without surgical intervention, but every day they delayed the surgery their chances of surviving just got worse; it was necessary to perform the surgeries sooner rather than later.
Answer Choice (B) The conclusion is that the risks were incurred unnecessarily, not unknowingly.
Answer Choice (C) This would if anything strengthen the argument by suggesting the surgeries were being unnecessarily performed.
Answer Choice (D) It is entirely consistent for elective surgeries to be, in general, less risky than emergency surgeries, and for hospitals in the area to be incurring unnecessary risks performing said surgeries.
Answer Choice (E) This doesn’t address the argument, it just distinguishes surgery failure from surgery mortality.
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LSAT PrepTest 14 Explanations
Section 1 - Logic Games
Section 2 - Logical Reasoning
- Question 01
- Question 02
- Question 03
- Question 04
- Question 05
- Question 06
- Question 07
- Question 08
- Question 09
- Question 10
- Question 11
- Question 12
- Question 13
- Question 14
- Question 15
- Question 16
- Question 17
- Question 18
- Question 19
- Question 20
- Question 21
- Question 22
- Question 23
- Question 24
- Question 25
Section 3 - Reading Comprehension
- Passage 1 – Passage
- Passage 1 – Questions
- Passage 2 – Passage
- Passage 2 – Questions
- Passage 3 – Passage
- Passage 3 – Questions
- Passage 4 – Passage
- Passage 4 – Questions
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