You're really going to hit me with a "you can assume its the most damaging without the article explicitly saying it" after I've seen no less than 50 explanations going over how "it's never stated in the passage to be MOST, therefore you can't make this assumption."

The assumption needed is with patents -> software innovation would be more profitable than without patents.

This weakens the claim that patents impede software innovation because it gives at least one instance of patents giving software innovation an edge (it makes them more profitable).

I think most people (myself included) were really stuck on the idea of an answer similar to patents promoting innovation. We kept trying to find something that maybe led to patents leading to more innovation of some kind. But in the end, all that's needed to weaken the position is giving one instance where software innovation as a concept, benefits from patents vs no patents. The bar of impede is low enough that one point of benefit weakens it.

I guess the key here is that "to represent mathematically" is NOT THE SAME as "modeling". If it were, B would be incorrect. Because the paragraph doesn't actually go into why it was difficut to mathematically represent Pin Factory. We don't know from the 4th paragraph the specific difficulty(s) with mathematically representing Pin Factory, only that it is difficult.

Very frustrating question since modeling by definition means representing something mathematically. To say that "a difficulty with modeling the assumption is that it is very difficult to mathematically represent the assumption" just sounds very redundant.

The correct answer (B) here assumes that Payne's contemporary scientists did not accept her theory due to it lacking a reason for the Sun producing energy. But how does that make sense when the iron hypothesis also does not have a valid energy theory?

Lord Kelvin's contraction hypothesis did not hold up under fossil records, and we know this was known at the time beacuse we are told Payne was led to reexamine the hypothesis and data.

I do not see how we can say that nuclear fusion explains why Payne's findings were rejected when we are not specifically told why in the first place.

For this question I was confused on (C).

The explanation video and the explanation paragraph seems to confuse the spleen itself to store oxygen, which according to the question stem is not true. The spleen stores blood that is oxygenated. If C establishes that oxygen stored in the lungs and blood are not adequate, then does it not weaken the hypotehsis that seals also store oxygenated blood in their spleens? Even if it does not weaken the hypotehsis, I cannot see how it "provides some support" for the hypothesis. Unless the test writers meant to differentiate "oxygen in bloodstream" from "oxygenated blood stored in spleen" which would be equally confusing.

I misinterpreted AC (A) to be introducing the idea that maybe astronomers have been mistakenly identifying a nearby neutron star as something left behind by a recent supernova, but in reality the neutron star was always there. The "nearby" wording threw me off.

For this question I think I overanalyzed the wording here. I was down between D and E and chose E because of the plurality of "conflicts" which matched up the starting paragraph 3 "these difficulties". Also, my justification for picking E is that the concept of there being 2 different equipoise is something the author himself introduces. Therefore, to other current clinical researchers, the "general notion of equipoise" is just simply the theoretical one.

This may have been too far of a leap to make considering the other answer choices specify the type of equipoise, but the "main difficulty" part really threw me off.

Answer choice B appeared to have so many assumptions associated that I ruled it out in favor of AC(D), which at least gave a hint that Belcher and Hu's research was doing something, namely (maybe) narrowing down peptides grown thanks to better control of parameters. I know this is also a huge assumption but it just seemed more relevant to me than AC(B) would have been. How are we sure that the peptide friendly materials are the ones that can substitute?

Also, the reasoning for D being wrong is that "it only tells us what happened in the past, not giving any indication of what will or might happen". Meanwhile, B is just stating a fact about semiconductor material in general, leaving us to make all the connections to Belcher and Hu's research results.

I hope my actual exam won't have a question like this.

This was really helpful as a review of the question types in LR. Thank you!

@Daisy228 the preceding clause of "many editorialists criticize these attacks" should indicate that the author is still talking about the "attacks" rather than the politicians when stating "voters pay them scant attention".

I'm confused on what makes something an argument based on the definition of support, which is one claim being true increases the likelihood of the other to also be true. What if in this argument, the conclusion claim was instead: "Walt has never been to the Magical Kingdom?" If all the premises are true, it doesnt neccessitate the fact that Walt has NEVER been to the Magical Kingdom, but it does logically increase the likelihood of him never being there because he's never kneeled at Goofy's altar? Would this still be an argument just with very weak support? What if the conclusion was worded as "Walt has probably never been to the Magical Kingdom?"