I chose C Because I said to myself: Most doesn't equal All. So the remaining injuries could very likely be joint or tightness injuries which flexibility from stretching will help. I confused possibility logic with argument impact logic. I should have just focused on what was stated in the choice. Great question to learn from!!!
I'm going to be 100% honest, I used chat GPT to help me understand this better Lol.. and it truly did help. I got it right in BR, wrong first attempt. I understood the stimulus, it's the AC's that were throwing me completely off.
maybe this is me trying to cope but the only reason I got this one wrong was because, for some reason, in the middle of reading the answer choices, my brain switched to "you're finding a strengthener", chose C, and I just ran with it like ohhhhh brotherrrr
is it reasonable to assume that every time a stim describing an experiment does not state, "the participants were assigned into two groups" that the participants self-selected?
i dont know why i have such a hard time reading these questions. i feel like i keep making mistakes because i forget halfway through that i am supposed to be weakening the argument and i look for an answer that strengthens it. so frustrating
@CamilleChmura What has been working for me is to find the conclusion and go hunting for an answer that directly attacks it. I read the conclusion and in my head go "therefore" then read answer choices and see if it attacks it.
I don't know if that's helpful lol, but that's what my approach has been.
Isn't D really really weak? For it to actually do anything to the argument, we have to assume that the proportion of jogging injuries in the population is not insignificant — because if it WERE insignificant, then the number of injury-prone joggers who self-selected into Group 1 would also be insignificant. But this is a pretty big assumption.
D would be much stronger if the relationship was reversed — "the more likely a jogger is to develop the habit of performing stretches before jogging, the more prone they are to jogging injuries." Were this to be the case, there would be much more reason to suppose that Group 1 is composed of, to a significant degree, injury-prone joggers.
I guess D is still the best answer out of a crop of bad answer choices. But to me it seems only just barely. Am I overthinking this?
@djlectic The way you flipped that would seemingly strengthen the argument, not make D a better answer choice. The way you worded that would imply that stretching causes one to become more injury prone. The conclusion of the stimmy was that stretching does not prevent injury. If stretching causes one to become more injury prone, then certainly it doesn’t prevent injury.
Also, I would not consider answer choice D to be a “really, really weak” answer. Answer choice D weakens the argument in the stimmy by introducing a confounding variable in the study being discussed. In this case, the confounding variable is that one group is more prone to injury than the other. If one group is predisposed to injury, then it is not good science to compare their injury rate to a group that is less prone to injury. The researchers would have needed to control for both groups predisposition to injury, or weight their data to compensate for the bias in their sampling method. We do not know how much of an impact this had on the results of the study, but we do not need to since it was not addressed at all in the argument. As long as there is a confounding variable that may reasonably impact the results of the study, then we can take the conclusion with a grain of salt. It’s much less reasonable to assume that the difference in injury predisposition is insignificant without any evidence than it is to be skeptical of a study/argument that did not address this confounding variable at all. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s not a “must be false” question. It just needs to weaken the argument, which it does reasonably well, especially compared to the other answers.
Flaw here: I thought it was "so stretching reduces only the severity of your injuries and not the likelihood of injury"
Instead the flaw was "Ppl who stretch are more injury prone. stretching does reduce the likelihood of injury. it does it to the point where ppl who stretch have reduced their injury likelihood to the point where they now have reached the same likelihood of injury as non-stretchers."
The latter is probably easier to do than the former; rather than refuse the idea that stretching reduces injury, see how it still potentially could be true. Another flaw I want to be more aware of is the idea of "change in vs. rate".
@tswalker83 To avoid that in the future--bet on yourself and choose the answer you were thinking of without second thought. Even if you get it wrong, it's important to build up that confidence and intuitive reflex early on
The stimulus says that they have equal amounts of injuries, therefore stretching must not help mitigate injury. But the more a jogger is prone to injury the more likely they are to stretch. So, if you're prone to injury you stretch, which results in getting injured the same amount in comparison to someone who is not prone and not stretching. You've just proven the effectiveness of stretching.
Wowwwww, I came back to this explanation 3 months after, to give it a second chance, and NOW I GET IT. Sometimes, letting a question sit for a while helps!!!
This is what clicked for me, in case it's helpful to anyone:
What's important of answer choice D is the "more prone to injuries" part. It may be helpful to re-write this answer choice in dif ways, but meeting the same function, so let's do it:
Original answer choice: "The more prone a jogger is to jogging injuries, the more likely he or she is to develop the habit of performing stretches before jogging."
Easier, more intuitive versions of it:
"the first group is more prone to injuries." [that would do it, right?]
"the second group is amateur and therefore their training is less intense or less competitive"
"the first group are all 65 years old or older."
"the second group trains in a safer environment", etc.
the important thing is that individuals from the first group all suffer more injuries to begin with.
How does answer (D) serve to weaken the argument? The way I read the question and the explanation seems like it would strengthen the medical researcher's hypothesis?
The way I understand it is that if a injury-prone jogger is more likely to stretch the more they get injured, there would need to be a reason. We can reasonably assume that the reason would be to prevent further injury, thus weakening the argument.
D shows that stretching people are already injury prone, so the information from the study is not reliable because the people in the stretching group already have a higher chance of injury, which they probably lower through stretching. Thus, not only is the study unreliable (it actually might point to a hypothesis that stretching is helpful because it lowers the injury-prone state to a level equal to non injury-prone and non-stretching.
@klaramartone02 Answer choice D weakens the argument in the stimmy by introducing a confounding variable in the study being discussed. In this case, the confounding variable is that one group is more prone to injury than the other. If one group is predisposed to injury, then it is not good science to compare their injury rate to a group that is less prone to injury. The researchers would have needed to control for both groups predisposition to injury, or weight their data to compensate for the bias in their sampling method. We do not know how much of an impact this had on the results of the study, but we do not need to since it was not addressed at all in the argument. As long as there is a confounding variable that may reasonably impact the results of the study, then we can take the conclusion with a grain of salt until we know whether the confounding variable was significantly impactful on the results, or already controlled for in the study.
Subscribe to unlock everything that 7Sage has to offer.
Hold on there, stranger! You need a free account for that.
We love that you want to get going. Just create a free account below—it only takes a minute—and then you can continue!
Hold on there, stranger! You need a free account for that.
We love that you came here to read all the amazing posts from our 300,000+ members. They all have accounts too! Just create a free account below—it only takes a minute—and then you’re free to discuss anything!
Hold on there, stranger! You need a free account for that.
We love that you want to give us feedback! Just create a free account below—it only takes a minute—and then you’re free to vote on this!
Hold on there, you need to slow down.
We love that you want post in our discussion forum! Just come back in a bit to post again!
Subscribers can learn all the LSAT secrets.
Happens all the time: now that you've had a taste of the lessons, you just can't stop -- and you don't have to! Click the button.
120 comments
This one was really difficult. I'm getting all the weaken questions wrong :( I chose C
Oh man not my STEM degree coming in handy.
I chose C Because I said to myself: Most doesn't equal All. So the remaining injuries could very likely be joint or tightness injuries which flexibility from stretching will help. I confused possibility logic with argument impact logic. I should have just focused on what was stated in the choice. Great question to learn from!!!
:( I chose C
@amara C is temping but strengthens the argument (it wouldn't matter anyways) instead of weaken it
I'm going to be 100% honest, I used chat GPT to help me understand this better Lol.. and it truly did help. I got it right in BR, wrong first attempt. I understood the stimulus, it's the AC's that were throwing me completely off.
At least my stem background helps with these questions
@ArdenAmarelo And my philosophy background helped me with this.
@suhyahn My finance background is crying in the back.
Wow this question was really hard for me. First time I got both regular and BR wrong
maybe this is me trying to cope but the only reason I got this one wrong was because, for some reason, in the middle of reading the answer choices, my brain switched to "you're finding a strengthener", chose C, and I just ran with it like ohhhhh brotherrrr
Fun Question. Not too bad.
This feels like a bad joke
i got it right through process of elimination
i hate this test with a passion
@ramrob2k12 still haven't seen how this test will make me a better lawyer
I had the biggest "OHHHHHH'" moment at time 3:18. Like how did I miss that.
is it reasonable to assume that every time a stim describing an experiment does not state, "the participants were assigned into two groups" that the participants self-selected?
i dont know why i have such a hard time reading these questions. i feel like i keep making mistakes because i forget halfway through that i am supposed to be weakening the argument and i look for an answer that strengthens it. so frustrating
Could someone please share their process for answering questions like this?
@CamilleChmura What has been working for me is to find the conclusion and go hunting for an answer that directly attacks it. I read the conclusion and in my head go "therefore" then read answer choices and see if it attacks it.
I don't know if that's helpful lol, but that's what my approach has been.
Isn't D really really weak? For it to actually do anything to the argument, we have to assume that the proportion of jogging injuries in the population is not insignificant — because if it WERE insignificant, then the number of injury-prone joggers who self-selected into Group 1 would also be insignificant. But this is a pretty big assumption.
D would be much stronger if the relationship was reversed — "the more likely a jogger is to develop the habit of performing stretches before jogging, the more prone they are to jogging injuries." Were this to be the case, there would be much more reason to suppose that Group 1 is composed of, to a significant degree, injury-prone joggers.
I guess D is still the best answer out of a crop of bad answer choices. But to me it seems only just barely. Am I overthinking this?
@djlectic The way you flipped that would seemingly strengthen the argument, not make D a better answer choice. The way you worded that would imply that stretching causes one to become more injury prone. The conclusion of the stimmy was that stretching does not prevent injury. If stretching causes one to become more injury prone, then certainly it doesn’t prevent injury.
Also, I would not consider answer choice D to be a “really, really weak” answer. Answer choice D weakens the argument in the stimmy by introducing a confounding variable in the study being discussed. In this case, the confounding variable is that one group is more prone to injury than the other. If one group is predisposed to injury, then it is not good science to compare their injury rate to a group that is less prone to injury. The researchers would have needed to control for both groups predisposition to injury, or weight their data to compensate for the bias in their sampling method. We do not know how much of an impact this had on the results of the study, but we do not need to since it was not addressed at all in the argument. As long as there is a confounding variable that may reasonably impact the results of the study, then we can take the conclusion with a grain of salt. It’s much less reasonable to assume that the difference in injury predisposition is insignificant without any evidence than it is to be skeptical of a study/argument that did not address this confounding variable at all. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s not a “must be false” question. It just needs to weaken the argument, which it does reasonably well, especially compared to the other answers.
Hope this helps!
im so confused bro I didn't even consider that answer as being remotely valid
Flaw here: I thought it was "so stretching reduces only the severity of your injuries and not the likelihood of injury"
Instead the flaw was "Ppl who stretch are more injury prone. stretching does reduce the likelihood of injury. it does it to the point where ppl who stretch have reduced their injury likelihood to the point where they now have reached the same likelihood of injury as non-stretchers."
The latter is probably easier to do than the former; rather than refuse the idea that stretching reduces injury, see how it still potentially could be true. Another flaw I want to be more aware of is the idea of "change in vs. rate".
I had the right answer, and I talked myself out of it. sigh
@tswalker83 To avoid that in the future--bet on yourself and choose the answer you were thinking of without second thought. Even if you get it wrong, it's important to build up that confidence and intuitive reflex early on
took me over 1 hour to comprehend this one and like I still don't really.
@joanna47 I almost attempted to explain how I got D to someone in the comments and I couldn't even understand how I got D 😭.
The stimulus says that they have equal amounts of injuries, therefore stretching must not help mitigate injury. But the more a jogger is prone to injury the more likely they are to stretch. So, if you're prone to injury you stretch, which results in getting injured the same amount in comparison to someone who is not prone and not stretching. You've just proven the effectiveness of stretching.
this is great, thank you! I got it right but I didnt fully understand why it was right
Wowwwww, I came back to this explanation 3 months after, to give it a second chance, and NOW I GET IT. Sometimes, letting a question sit for a while helps!!!
This is what clicked for me, in case it's helpful to anyone:
What's important of answer choice D is the "more prone to injuries" part. It may be helpful to re-write this answer choice in dif ways, but meeting the same function, so let's do it:
Original answer choice: "The more prone a jogger is to jogging injuries, the more likely he or she is to develop the habit of performing stretches before jogging."
Easier, more intuitive versions of it:
"the first group is more prone to injuries." [that would do it, right?]
"the second group is amateur and therefore their training is less intense or less competitive"
"the first group are all 65 years old or older."
"the second group trains in a safer environment", etc.
the important thing is that individuals from the first group all suffer more injuries to begin with.
Finally a level 5 right!
How does answer (D) serve to weaken the argument? The way I read the question and the explanation seems like it would strengthen the medical researcher's hypothesis?
The way I understand it is that if a injury-prone jogger is more likely to stretch the more they get injured, there would need to be a reason. We can reasonably assume that the reason would be to prevent further injury, thus weakening the argument.
D shows that stretching people are already injury prone, so the information from the study is not reliable because the people in the stretching group already have a higher chance of injury, which they probably lower through stretching. Thus, not only is the study unreliable (it actually might point to a hypothesis that stretching is helpful because it lowers the injury-prone state to a level equal to non injury-prone and non-stretching.
@klaramartone02 Answer choice D weakens the argument in the stimmy by introducing a confounding variable in the study being discussed. In this case, the confounding variable is that one group is more prone to injury than the other. If one group is predisposed to injury, then it is not good science to compare their injury rate to a group that is less prone to injury. The researchers would have needed to control for both groups predisposition to injury, or weight their data to compensate for the bias in their sampling method. We do not know how much of an impact this had on the results of the study, but we do not need to since it was not addressed at all in the argument. As long as there is a confounding variable that may reasonably impact the results of the study, then we can take the conclusion with a grain of salt until we know whether the confounding variable was significantly impactful on the results, or already controlled for in the study.