I had B first in mind but began to slightly panic when the narrator stated " if you like B you better be able to say there is a circumstance". However I'm glad I was patient enough to continue to sit through the video lol
I initially chose answer choice A and even after listening to the video I still had a very hard time figuring it out. I am sharing it for anyone who is also confused.
I am going to break down the given data in the stimulus:
1)Both an fMRI and a genetic profile contain information that a patient wishes to keep private.
2)An fMRI contains enough information from the patient’s skull to create a recognizable image of the patient’s face.
3)A genetic profile can be linked to a patient only by a label or matching records.
Now, consider this scenario: you have both the genetic profile of a patient and an fMRI of the same patient. Neither has a label. By looking at the fMRI, you could say, “Oh! That’s John’s face!” (since you can recognize a person’s face from the fMRI). But can you also tell that the genetic profile belongs to John? No! Why not? Because you can only identify the owner of a genetic profile if there is a label on it (e.g., “John…”), or if you have some record that lets you match the data to John.
Therefore, in this situation, the fMRI can put the patient’s privacy at a greater risk than the genetic profile.
Answer choice (B) says: “An fMRI has the potential to compromise patient privacy in circumstances in which a genetic profile would not.”
I hope that makes answer choice (B) much clearer now!
I answered this in a few seconds, and the way I did it is by cancelling out ASAP anything that used the worst "most" or anything that presented an absolute, like A. That allowed me to narrow down to B and E, and then I chose B because the subject of the stimulus focussed on fMRI and genetic profiling. Is this a good strategy for these questions?
This is definitely a good strategy. Check out the comment below by Chanduell. I would, however, add that despite how good a strategy is the goal should always be to truly understand a question type...just don't lose sight of this.
I would say that this isn't the best strategy. If you think about the SAT, this is a common way people eliminate answer choices. However, it's important to think about the LSAT separately from what usually works when answering questions. The stimulus is often an argument from someone and sometimes can contain opinions. This means that the correct answer choices will definitely contain absolutes in some questions since you have to go off of what is true in the stimulus.
I thought this was only the case if and only if the stimulus contains claims that are universal or absolute. Meaning, if we see words like 'can contain' or 'can be linked', then we know that the answer won't attempt at claiming something beyond what the premises' strength is. This being a conclusion that doesn't say 'X will happen', 'X has to happen'. These are absolute claims, after all, the strongest supported conclusion would be one that wouldn't attempt at concluding something extremely strong based on weak premises.
answer choice C and D made me stray away from them because saying "in most cases" and "most of the info" is generalizing that 51%-100% cases would encounter this problem which we don't know. more of a strong assumption that we don't have further information on. im not sure if that is how eliminating these AC go, so please correct if I am wrong to go about it that way.
Yes! This is a very helpful tool to use when answer choices are tricky. It's why there's such a big lesson on grammar because it really is that important on the test. Recognizing the relationship these words have in logic in terms of support and conditionality will significantly improve your ability to catch completely unsupported or weakly supported statements.
hii! i did the same thing, i saw those two phrases and alarm bells began to ring right away, and i easily saw that they were not justified per the stimulus. i eliminated them quickly and moved on.
So I am thrown off by "B" being the correct answer. I do not think the explanation made much sense to me. Can someone explain. How was I supposed to assume that An fMRI has the potential to compromise patient privacy in circumstances in which a genetic profile would not when the passage states, "Like a genetic profile, a functional magnetic-resonance image (fMRI) of the brain can contain information that a patient wishes to keep private."
That sentence is saying they both do the same thing in the way of compromising patient privacy...or that is how I took it, so I definitely did not rely on B as the answer....anyone got a better explanation to this rather than this person's explanation?
This person said, "(B) tells us that, considering what we know to be true about fMRIs, there are situations where an fMRI could potentially compromise a patient’s privacy. In those same situations, a genetic profile does not have this potential."
I am not following in the way this person breaks it down.
You're focusing on the wrong part. The last two sentences focus on how that private information is accessed, which is what B is supported by. In order to access private information in a genetic profile, you would need to read a label or records. In order to access private information in an fMRI, all you would need to do is look at a face, and you'd know private information that the patient would maybe like to keep discrete.
B states, "An fMRI has the potential to compromise patient privacy in circumstances in which a genetic profile would not." which is true, according to the stim. Someone could look at a familiar person's fMRI and know that they have, for example, Alzheimer's, which could be something they want to keep private. Would this exact same circumstance happen with genetic profiles? No it would not.
To answer questions it will often be required to make assumptions, but only those which are completely reasonable. It would be unreasonable to assume that the fMRIs didn't have labels. Imagine if a hospital didn't label my medical history under my name, we would never be able to find it. At this point it is more of an inference based on the organizational nature of hospitals to assume that fMRIs are labeled. The point of the question is that for genetic profiles the only possible way to connect them to the patent is through the label, while for the fMRI there exists another way-which is stated in the passage.
I wish I could write on the screen, that would be infinitely more helpful. I resort to underlines and highlights, which make it slightly more difficult.
I got the correct answer it just took me a while because I didn't realize the first sentence "like a genetic profile" was setting the stage to compare a genetic profile and FMRI. After hearing Kevin's explanation I immediately realized - that when I first read the stimulus I was def going too fast.
#feedback I find the use of 'merely consistent' to be potentially confusing for learners. A better choice is 'unknowable' or something similar. For example, answer choice A, here, isn't 'consistent' in the literal definition with anything suggested by the stimulus-- it is simply outside the bounds of what is being suggested in the stim. I get what you mean, and it doesn't hinder my understanding, but I feel it is not the best choice of terminology.
I picked E.) before watching the whole video I think the common words "patient privacy" tricked me because I also saw it earlier when they said "a patient wishes to keep private"
I was contemplating between B and E. A is obviously outside the scope of the question and is wrong in several ways. The way I perceived it to be wrong flawed because I assumed that it is commonsensical to apply labels in the medical field. C and D uses "most" which is indicates the degree, and nowhere in the stim talks about the level of information nor of the degree of the patients' sureness in their privacy - but I could be wrong. Due to self-doubt, I grouped them together to deal with later if all else failed.
E is incorrect because it assumes people are more fearful of fMRIs than of genetic profiles. Patients' feedback is not included in the stim. It must be wrong.
The ability to create the patient's face might make fMRI sounds like it poses a greater threat, but that's an assumption. The stim does not say anything about fMRIs posing a greater security threat. It simply highlights that fMRIs have a feature that genetic profiles lack. The passage’s point is that both fMRIs and genetic profiles can threaten privacy, but fMRIs contain additional information - which means there are more possible avenues for privacy compromise, not necessarily a greater degree of threat.
I was confused until I made this distinction. From a pure grammatical standpoint, "Like a genetic profile" is a modifier and actually not a subject. However, when we analyze the logic of the passage it is treated as a subject since a parallel is made between "genetic profile" and "fMRI."
So "Like a genetic profile" is a Logical Subject but not a Grammatical Subject.
I thought B was wrong, mainly because the first premise states, how a patient can keep info contained in an FMRI private, so I did not think much about B. If the person cannot access info about the FMRI how could they construct the face? was what I was thinking.
@rickyrivas94 we have to remember that we CANNOT assume. The passage here did not state that the patients did not know about this, however we have to stay in the bounds of the stimulus and infer if it strongly supports the answer.
@rickyrivas94 But the first premise actually doesn't say the patient can keep the information private. It says "can contain information that a patient wishes to keep private." So the patient has the desire to keep it private, but the following line then suggests that it contains enough information that it can be a recognizable image of the patient's face. This suggests that even if there is no label with the patient's name, an association can be made from the image of the face.
why is it okay to assume the fMRIs can be accessed via a label? the text is explicit in that genetic profiles can be accessed via labels, but based on what is it okay to assume that the same is true for fMRIs? why is that assumption okay?
The label can be added to the fMRI diagram because we can reasonably assume that a place conducting these scans will HAVE to have names or "labels" to associate the info to a patient. Like J.Y. said, just because they CAN recreate the face and then track the person down (using facial recognition etc.) doesn't mean it would be easier than labeling the document with a way to track the patient like used for genetic profiles.
As for answer choice C - it is out of left field to me. I think the LSAT authors want you to make a quick assumption about privacy being in the stimulus so they put it as an answer choice but if you refer to the stimulus and take the time to ask yourself if the claim is backed up by the stimulus (like in blind review) we would find that it is not supported at all. I have made similar mistakes and have to remind myself the real world doesn't matter ONLY what you can see or reasonably assume in the stimulus.
I crashed and burned on this question and chose C, mostly because I read too fast and missed the "Cannot" part in QC and the "Not" part in QA. But if we took away the "not" part in QA, would we have a more reasonably stronger answer choice? My answer is no, because its assuming that fMRI's can be securitized the same way as genetic profiles. Once he was going over the answers, I realized that QB was correct, because in my mind it fixes QA (when I was reading it without the "not"). We can't say "fMRI's need this kind of security measure" thats an assumption, and one we would base off of real life. At most, we know that fMRI's have a break in security that genetic profiles do not, and based off the passage, we do not have a have a fix for the fMRI at the moment. Please let me know if this is a good interpretation or a good way to realize what questions are wrong and right.
I read "only referring to labels or records" as it's so easy to get that info by just reading the labels. It. So I initially chose C.
However, as soon as I heard the narrator read the question and put an emphasis on the ONLY. I realized I read it wrong and quickly went back to redo the question and put the answer as B.
I gotta spend more time remembering indicator words. smh.
Someone help me through the lessons when I attempt the questions before they are explained I get them right. When I drill the questions however I keep getting like 3/5s or 2/5s rarely a 4/5 and never a 5/5 idk what to do
Are the steps to attack the question 1) Read question stem, 2) read answer choices, 3) read stimulus, 4) analyze/parse/work the passage, and either 5a) choose the right answer or 5b) eliminate the incorrect answer?
If we know the answer choices won't make sense until we read the stimulus, why waste those seconds?
No, he was just using that as an example that the answer choices won't make sense unless you read the stimulus. 1) Read question stem, 2) read stimulus, 3) while reading connect/analyze the statements (dots). For example, he did that with the first sentence, he connected the dots in the "Like a genetic profile, FmRI is..." and then 4) check out the answer choices and eliminate what is not supported or cannot be inferred from the stimulus while looking for the correct answer.
As he said, we should always connect back and hold tight to the stimulus
83 comments
watches practice lesson lecture
"Yeah okay, that makes sense."
does practice question, gets question wrong
"FML"
This is one of those questions where I find it easier to eliminate ACDE than straight up choosing B.
@josiahcaterino yeah, I feel like when he talked about B he was using outside knowledge. Which was something I thought we should avoid.
I had B first in mind but began to slightly panic when the narrator stated " if you like B you better be able to say there is a circumstance". However I'm glad I was patient enough to continue to sit through the video lol
@Chanda.m same
I initially chose answer choice A and even after listening to the video I still had a very hard time figuring it out. I am sharing it for anyone who is also confused.
I am going to break down the given data in the stimulus:
1)Both an fMRI and a genetic profile contain information that a patient wishes to keep private.
2)An fMRI contains enough information from the patient’s skull to create a recognizable image of the patient’s face.
3)A genetic profile can be linked to a patient only by a label or matching records.
Now, consider this scenario: you have both the genetic profile of a patient and an fMRI of the same patient. Neither has a label. By looking at the fMRI, you could say, “Oh! That’s John’s face!” (since you can recognize a person’s face from the fMRI). But can you also tell that the genetic profile belongs to John? No! Why not? Because you can only identify the owner of a genetic profile if there is a label on it (e.g., “John…”), or if you have some record that lets you match the data to John.
Therefore, in this situation, the fMRI can put the patient’s privacy at a greater risk than the genetic profile.
Answer choice (B) says: “An fMRI has the potential to compromise patient privacy in circumstances in which a genetic profile would not.”
I hope that makes answer choice (B) much clearer now!
@rashysn6sara860 This made more sense to me than the video explanation LOL
I answered this in a few seconds, and the way I did it is by cancelling out ASAP anything that used the worst "most" or anything that presented an absolute, like A. That allowed me to narrow down to B and E, and then I chose B because the subject of the stimulus focussed on fMRI and genetic profiling. Is this a good strategy for these questions?
This is definitely a good strategy. Check out the comment below by Chanduell. I would, however, add that despite how good a strategy is the goal should always be to truly understand a question type...just don't lose sight of this.
I would say that this isn't the best strategy. If you think about the SAT, this is a common way people eliminate answer choices. However, it's important to think about the LSAT separately from what usually works when answering questions. The stimulus is often an argument from someone and sometimes can contain opinions. This means that the correct answer choices will definitely contain absolutes in some questions since you have to go off of what is true in the stimulus.
I thought this was only the case if and only if the stimulus contains claims that are universal or absolute. Meaning, if we see words like 'can contain' or 'can be linked', then we know that the answer won't attempt at claiming something beyond what the premises' strength is. This being a conclusion that doesn't say 'X will happen', 'X has to happen'. These are absolute claims, after all, the strongest supported conclusion would be one that wouldn't attempt at concluding something extremely strong based on weak premises.
agreed - well said
answer choice C and D made me stray away from them because saying "in most cases" and "most of the info" is generalizing that 51%-100% cases would encounter this problem which we don't know. more of a strong assumption that we don't have further information on. im not sure if that is how eliminating these AC go, so please correct if I am wrong to go about it that way.
Yes! This is a very helpful tool to use when answer choices are tricky. It's why there's such a big lesson on grammar because it really is that important on the test. Recognizing the relationship these words have in logic in terms of support and conditionality will significantly improve your ability to catch completely unsupported or weakly supported statements.
hii! i did the same thing, i saw those two phrases and alarm bells began to ring right away, and i easily saw that they were not justified per the stimulus. i eliminated them quickly and moved on.
y'alls usernames crack me up
So I am thrown off by "B" being the correct answer. I do not think the explanation made much sense to me. Can someone explain. How was I supposed to assume that An fMRI has the potential to compromise patient privacy in circumstances in which a genetic profile would not when the passage states, "Like a genetic profile, a functional magnetic-resonance image (fMRI) of the brain can contain information that a patient wishes to keep private."
That sentence is saying they both do the same thing in the way of compromising patient privacy...or that is how I took it, so I definitely did not rely on B as the answer....anyone got a better explanation to this rather than this person's explanation?
This person said, "(B) tells us that, considering what we know to be true about fMRIs, there are situations where an fMRI could potentially compromise a patient’s privacy. In those same situations, a genetic profile does not have this potential."
I am not following in the way this person breaks it down.
You're focusing on the wrong part. The last two sentences focus on how that private information is accessed, which is what B is supported by. In order to access private information in a genetic profile, you would need to read a label or records. In order to access private information in an fMRI, all you would need to do is look at a face, and you'd know private information that the patient would maybe like to keep discrete.
B states, "An fMRI has the potential to compromise patient privacy in circumstances in which a genetic profile would not." which is true, according to the stim. Someone could look at a familiar person's fMRI and know that they have, for example, Alzheimer's, which could be something they want to keep private. Would this exact same circumstance happen with genetic profiles? No it would not.
But how do we know fMRI has labels
To answer questions it will often be required to make assumptions, but only those which are completely reasonable. It would be unreasonable to assume that the fMRIs didn't have labels. Imagine if a hospital didn't label my medical history under my name, we would never be able to find it. At this point it is more of an inference based on the organizational nature of hospitals to assume that fMRIs are labeled. The point of the question is that for genetic profiles the only possible way to connect them to the patent is through the label, while for the fMRI there exists another way-which is stated in the passage.
i was thinking this too... because that's an assumption on our part that they're telling us to avoid... #help
yup!
#feedback: the Fact v. Belief v. Knowledge link is broken
I wish I could write on the screen, that would be infinitely more helpful. I resort to underlines and highlights, which make it slightly more difficult.
This may be a lot of work, but I screenshot the questions on my iPad to annotate and watch from my laptop.
I got the correct answer it just took me a while because I didn't realize the first sentence "like a genetic profile" was setting the stage to compare a genetic profile and FMRI. After hearing Kevin's explanation I immediately realized - that when I first read the stimulus I was def going too fast.
Same with me!
#feedback I find the use of 'merely consistent' to be potentially confusing for learners. A better choice is 'unknowable' or something similar. For example, answer choice A, here, isn't 'consistent' in the literal definition with anything suggested by the stimulus-- it is simply outside the bounds of what is being suggested in the stim. I get what you mean, and it doesn't hinder my understanding, but I feel it is not the best choice of terminology.
I picked E.) before watching the whole video I think the common words "patient privacy" tricked me because I also saw it earlier when they said "a patient wishes to keep private"
I was contemplating between B and E. A is obviously outside the scope of the question and is wrong in several ways. The way I perceived it to be wrong flawed because I assumed that it is commonsensical to apply labels in the medical field. C and D uses "most" which is indicates the degree, and nowhere in the stim talks about the level of information nor of the degree of the patients' sureness in their privacy - but I could be wrong. Due to self-doubt, I grouped them together to deal with later if all else failed.
E is incorrect because it assumes people are more fearful of fMRIs than of genetic profiles. Patients' feedback is not included in the stim. It must be wrong.
The ability to create the patient's face might make fMRI sounds like it poses a greater threat, but that's an assumption. The stim does not say anything about fMRIs posing a greater security threat. It simply highlights that fMRIs have a feature that genetic profiles lack. The passage’s point is that both fMRIs and genetic profiles can threaten privacy, but fMRIs contain additional information - which means there are more possible avenues for privacy compromise, not necessarily a greater degree of threat.
I was confused until I made this distinction. From a pure grammatical standpoint, "Like a genetic profile" is a modifier and actually not a subject. However, when we analyze the logic of the passage it is treated as a subject since a parallel is made between "genetic profile" and "fMRI."
So "Like a genetic profile" is a Logical Subject but not a Grammatical Subject.
I thought B was wrong, mainly because the first premise states, how a patient can keep info contained in an FMRI private, so I did not think much about B. If the person cannot access info about the FMRI how could they construct the face? was what I was thinking.
@rickyrivas94 we have to remember that we CANNOT assume. The passage here did not state that the patients did not know about this, however we have to stay in the bounds of the stimulus and infer if it strongly supports the answer.
@rickyrivas94 But the first premise actually doesn't say the patient can keep the information private. It says "can contain information that a patient wishes to keep private." So the patient has the desire to keep it private, but the following line then suggests that it contains enough information that it can be a recognizable image of the patient's face. This suggests that even if there is no label with the patient's name, an association can be made from the image of the face.
why is it okay to assume the fMRIs can be accessed via a label? the text is explicit in that genetic profiles can be accessed via labels, but based on what is it okay to assume that the same is true for fMRIs? why is that assumption okay?
Why did the "Label" get added to the fMRI diagram? how would we know to add a "label" to the genetic profile and fMRI?
Also, why is C wrong I can't seem to wrap my mind around it?
#help
The label can be added to the fMRI diagram because we can reasonably assume that a place conducting these scans will HAVE to have names or "labels" to associate the info to a patient. Like J.Y. said, just because they CAN recreate the face and then track the person down (using facial recognition etc.) doesn't mean it would be easier than labeling the document with a way to track the patient like used for genetic profiles.
As for answer choice C - it is out of left field to me. I think the LSAT authors want you to make a quick assumption about privacy being in the stimulus so they put it as an answer choice but if you refer to the stimulus and take the time to ask yourself if the claim is backed up by the stimulus (like in blind review) we would find that it is not supported at all. I have made similar mistakes and have to remind myself the real world doesn't matter ONLY what you can see or reasonably assume in the stimulus.
Super helpful. Thank you so much!!
But this video confused me completely
@TacoyaWilliams same
i've been using the spectrum to answer these. great tool to have
I crashed and burned on this question and chose C, mostly because I read too fast and missed the "Cannot" part in QC and the "Not" part in QA. But if we took away the "not" part in QA, would we have a more reasonably stronger answer choice? My answer is no, because its assuming that fMRI's can be securitized the same way as genetic profiles. Once he was going over the answers, I realized that QB was correct, because in my mind it fixes QA (when I was reading it without the "not"). We can't say "fMRI's need this kind of security measure" thats an assumption, and one we would base off of real life. At most, we know that fMRI's have a break in security that genetic profiles do not, and based off the passage, we do not have a have a fix for the fMRI at the moment. Please let me know if this is a good interpretation or a good way to realize what questions are wrong and right.
I initially read the question wrong.
I read "only referring to labels or records" as it's so easy to get that info by just reading the labels. It. So I initially chose C.
However, as soon as I heard the narrator read the question and put an emphasis on the ONLY. I realized I read it wrong and quickly went back to redo the question and put the answer as B.
I gotta spend more time remembering indicator words. smh.
Someone help me through the lessons when I attempt the questions before they are explained I get them right. When I drill the questions however I keep getting like 3/5s or 2/5s rarely a 4/5 and never a 5/5 idk what to do
That was hard!
I'm trying to comprehend everything JY (?) does.
Are the steps to attack the question 1) Read question stem, 2) read answer choices, 3) read stimulus, 4) analyze/parse/work the passage, and either 5a) choose the right answer or 5b) eliminate the incorrect answer?
If we know the answer choices won't make sense until we read the stimulus, why waste those seconds?
No, he was just using that as an example that the answer choices won't make sense unless you read the stimulus. 1) Read question stem, 2) read stimulus, 3) while reading connect/analyze the statements (dots). For example, he did that with the first sentence, he connected the dots in the "Like a genetic profile, FmRI is..." and then 4) check out the answer choices and eliminate what is not supported or cannot be inferred from the stimulus while looking for the correct answer.
As he said, we should always connect back and hold tight to the stimulus
#help
It seems that "Fact v. Belief. v. Knowledge" among lessons to reviews is expired.
Hi there,
I am so sorry about that.
The Fact v. Belief v. Knowledge lesson is still incomplete. We’re working on this, but we currently don’t have an estimated time for completion.
Let me know if you have any further questions.