Student Question

How do we know this sentence shows the profit of EACH bottle is equal to wholesale price minus the costs? “The winegrower's profit is equal to the wholesale price minus the costs of producing the bottled wine, which include the cost to the winegrower of the glass bottles themselves and of the corks.” why is the number of bottles not taken into account??

Tutor Answer

I don't necessarily know that there's a significant semantic difference bteween the costs of "corks" and the cost of "a cork per bottle." After all, if I saw a group of corked bottles, I would just say "those bottles have corks," not "there is a cork in each of those bottles."

To me, this feels like one of those stock-standard LSAT tricks -- basically, you're being asked to acknowledge that the problem could have been phrased better while simultaneously gauging whether the phrasing in its current form is enough to get you over the line. In my opinion, it is -- if you think I'm wrong about that, or you think that the phrasing poses a serious logical challenge, tell me why! I'd be happy to explain it out further.

Student Question

Does (E)’s statement that they “typically attack some plant species but find other species to be unsuitable hosts” fall in alignment with the text saying “ The problem can be cured by crop rotation, denying the pathogens a suitable host for a period of time” because by virtue of the fact they are denied a host we can infer that they don’t find every single species to be a suitable host at all times? I got to (E) by process of elimination, but wanted to confirm the text support for AC (E).

Tutor Answer

That's where I'd go for the textual support, yes. Nice job being resilient and finding a way to get through the question without quite knowing where to get the verbatim language to solve it!

Student Question

Are we able to rule out (D) since we don’t see our author introduce the suggestion they studied insufficient specimens, but rather the author just mentions one example, the Chief White Antelope blanket, to serve a different purpose in the text?

Tutor Answer

Correct. This is a place where being as literal and semantic as possible will really benefit you. Even though it might feel a little insane to eliminate an entire answer choice on the basis of one word (limited), but I think that's probably still the correct word.

To be clear, at least some part of this is an expression decision. What I mean by that is, had the author decided to imply something about the Chief White Antelope blanket being insufficient for the purposes of Amsden's claim, then you might have been able to choose AC (D). Because that implication isn't there, we can't pick it!

Student Question

Why would the scientists knowledge of the Brown experiment imply their acceptance of it? I feel like this is an assumption the author is making.

Tutor Answer

The argument concludes that:

"Most of the scientists surveyed reject the Minsk Hypothesis."

On the grounds that:

"A large survey of scientists found that almost all accept Wang's Law, and almost all know the results of the Brown-Eisler Experiment."

"But those results together with Wang's Law contradict the Minsk Hypothesis."

I see your point with regard to the knowledge of the Brown experiment. In fact, if there was an answer choice that said "these scientists accept the results of the Brown experiment," I might be tempted to choose it. Here's the thing: that's not an answer choice here, which means we have to go to other assumptions that are made by the argument.

The other big assumption here is that the scientists who are aware of the results of the combined contradictory experiments also know that those results are contradictory. If that's not true -- if they don't know that the results of the first two experiments contradict the result of Minsk Hypothesis -- then there's no reason to believe that those scientists reject that hypothesis.

Student Question

Could you provide an example of what “countering a hypothesis by indicating the falsehood of the implications of that hypothesis” would be in this specific case?

Tutor Answer

Okay, I love questions like this. So, the reason I would get rid of this answer choice immediately is because to my eye, there's no "hypothesis" here, meaning that any answer choice asserting the existence of a hypothesis or predicated on that existence is something I would be able to get rid of.

That said, if you want an example of what an argument featuring this pattern of reasoning would look like, let's say you told me:

"I think that in the future, we'll be able to teleport."

My response to that, in the style of "countering a hypothesis by indicating the falsehood of the implications of it," would look like:

"If that were true, then we would have no need for cars, trains, or planes. The problem is that the makers of those modes of transportation have enormous financial influence, and would never allow us to have a future where we were not transported by at least some mixture of those three modes. Thus, it is impossible to believe that anyone would be able to acquire the funding needed to create a teleportation device."

Student Question

Could I get more details on why A is right? Thank you :)

Tutor Answer

I'd be happy to explain in more detail why AC (A) is the correct choice here.

My first step with weaken questions on RC is to try to condense the argument I need to weaken down into something I can remember. Here, I'm only trying to weaken the material in Paragraphs 3 and 4. I actually think there's a really nice topic sentence at the top of P3.

The argument proposes replacing “theoretical equipoise” with a more workable standard called “clinical equipoise.” Theoretical equipoise is criticized as too restrictive and difficult to sustain, especially because it demands a kind of neutral uncertainty that may not reflect real-world medical disagreement.

In contrast, clinical equipoise is grounded in the actual state of the expert medical community. Comparative clinical trials are ethically justified when there is a genuine division among qualified experts about which treatment is preferable.

AC (A) says that "in most comparative clinical trials, the main purpose is to prove definitively that a treatment considered best by a consensus of relevant experts is in fact superior to the alternative being tested." Remember, though, that the author claimed that a reason to buy into clinical equipoise as a concept was the fact that the "absence of consensus within the expert clinical community is what makes clinical equipoise possible."

If the absence of consensus makes clinical equipoise possible, then it's not possible that it's a better choice than existing forms of equipoise when the purpose of medical procedures is to develop some kind of consensus. Those two ideas are mutually exclusive.

Student Question

I picked C for this question as I assumed that a market being “wide open” meant that the market had little competition. Is this erroneous assumption what prevented me from interpreting Renate’s answer correctly (i.e. understanding that she believes it’s possible to determine the market for rugs in Glendale)?

Tutor Answer

Nice catch! I think this is exactly the trap the question is designed to set up. I like to think of problems like this as "bait-and-switch" questions. Basically, you have identified a phenomenon that exists with the language of the question -- specifically, "wide open" meaning that the market has little competition. Then, when you tunnel on that, you miss the bigger problem: that Renate actually believes its possible that the market can be determined at all.

Student Question

Could you please explain how “for music is merely sound” supports the conclusion?

Tutor Answer

The conclusion of this argument is that "the meaning of a given piece of music is the emotion it elicits, this can mean only that music produces the core of a given emotion." This portion of the sentence (present in the back half of the stimulus) is immediately followed by the word for, which in this context means "because."

So, right off the rip, we have a semantic clue: the word "because" indicates that the author contends that the thing following that word supports the point he or she made prior to the word. The second clue is what the conclusion actually says. If we contend that music can only produce the core of an emotion, we can't just say that and be done. We need a reason to believe that it doesn't do something more. Music being "merely sound" is a limiting clause: it allows us to limit the reach of what music can do, such that it falls in line with the conclusion's assertion.

Student Question

I thought for PSA questions, "always" is attractive because a stronger answer isn’t necessarily bad right? Could you further explain why A is not right? Thank you!

Tutor Answer

Great question. "Always" is certainly attractive for PSA answers, I totally agree with that. However, it's not sufficient to make the answer choice correct.

Here, even though AC (A) features an absolute, it's still not correct. The words "economic interest" are the giveaway here: tariffs aren't actually in a country's best economic interest under the premises stated in the stimulus. We're told that if tariffs aren't imposed, then "farmland" will be "converted to more lucrative industrial uses." Just because a "way of life" will vanish as a result does not mean that this isn't economically beneficial to the country as a whole.

Student Question

What makes E wrong? Taken from their mother →8 weeks, older than 8 weeks→ likely to be have been taken from its mother. It sounds the same to me as the correct answer A. Is it because it about puppies older than 8 weeks and not exactly at 8 weeks? Also, how is this a valid argument?

Tutor Answer

Let's start with a fundamental truth about Parallel Flaw questions: a valid argument can never be the correct answer, because it does not have a flaw. Because of this, the easiest way for me to show you why AC (E) is wrong is to show you why AC (E) is a perfectly valid argument.

AC (E) says: “Most puppies are taken from their mothers at the age of eight weeks.” That tells us that, in general, being a puppy is strongly associated with being taken from its mother at eight weeks. In other words, for a randomly selected puppy, the probability is greater than 50% that it was taken from its mother at that age.

Now consider a puppy that is older than eight weeks. If most puppies are taken from their mothers at eight weeks, then by the time a puppy is older than eight weeks, it is likely that it already underwent that typical event. The fact that the puppy has passed the common age at which most separations occur makes it probable (though not certain) that it has been taken from its mother. The reasoning moves from a majority claim about a population (“most puppies”) to a likelihood claim about an individual member of that population. It's a valid argument, meaning that it cannot be the correct answer to this question.

Compare that to the stimulus: even if most migraine sufferers had childhood depression, it could still be true that only a small percentage of depressed children go on to develop migraines. The premise gives us no information about how common migraines are among depressed children.

Student Question

if the answer choice assumed miller → match would it be correct or no because someone assuming something doesnt mean they assume the contrapositive

Tutor Answer

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "assumed miller -> match." I actually do believe that the stimulus assumes that Miller, had she written the note, would have written it in such a way that it would have been recognizable. So, if what you mean by "assumed miller -> match" is that there's an answer choice that reads "assumes that Miller, had she written the note, would have written it in a style that would have been recognizable," maybe that's the right answer.

The problem I have with that answer still exists, though. There's a much bigger problem here, and that's the conclusion of the argument. The conclusion -- that Miller didn't have anything to do with the practical joke -- is predicated on the basis that the note doesn't look like something Miller wrote. The issue is that it's entirely possible that Miller still had something to do with it, even if the note was written in a different way. I think that problem still exists and is better described in AC (A), even compared to an answer that points out the underlying assumption (that Miller would have had to write the note in a recognizable way).

Student Question

Why isn’t the first sentence a match for AC(E)? Is it because the first sentence is just background information, and not an actual premise for the author/scientist’s argument?

Tutor Answer

I think you've correctly identified the way that I would eliminate AC (E) here: it's simply not a premise for the argument. This happens more often than people think on the test: while we're trained to give literally every ounce of our brainpower to every word in a stimulus, sometimes entire sentences will be logically irrelevant for the purposes of analyzing the argument.

Here, the first sentence is the author introducing a point of view that he or she plans to analyze. The author is not incorporating that point of view into the argument, or even planning on attacking its logical cogency. The author simply takes the sentence as an opportunity to introduce us, the readers, to the subject matter under examination.

Student Question

My apologies, why would it not be D as passage A does not mention pharmaceuticals

Tutor Answer

I agree with the claim that Passage A does not use the word "pharmaceuticals." Unfortunately, this is a trick. The word "pharmaceuticals" means "drugs," or "pills," or something of the link. The point is -- if I mention anything that falls into the broad umbrella of "pharmaceuticals," then I have technically mentioned new pharmaceuticals.

Think about it this way: pretend you and I were talking and you said:

"Dogs are mean."

And I looked at you, shocked, and said:

"I didn't know that you thought animals were mean."

You could respond and argue that you didn't say "animals," you said "dogs." However, the statement I made it technically correct: you do think that "animals" (dogs) are mean.

The same thing is true here. "Pharmaceuticals" does not appear in Passage A. However, the passage references "new drugs and therapies," which falls under the category of pharmaceuticals and therefore counts. It's tricky, but once you make this mistake, you won't make it again.

Student Question

PT107.S2.P3.Q19- I noticed that eliminating the answers required whether something concretely matched up with the experiment. For analogy answers, they can be practical analogies as well as conceptual, correct?

Tutor Answer

This is correct -- just because this analogy question has answers that track the experiment the answers are compared to very closely does not mean that all analogy questions will operate the same way. To be clear, I think that most analogy questions probably will. There's a reason that this question is a middle of the road, three-star problem: it's pretty representative of other questions of its type, at least in terms of difficulty. However, you should certainly not foreclose the possibility that the answers will be (as you put it) "conceptual."

Student Question

Given that, in para 1, we are led to understand that guild members were forbidden to pursue disciplinary action against other members, how come C, whereby the misrepresented their credentials, and can assumed to no longer be a part of the guild, is incorrect? Was my mistake in assuming that misrepresented credentials = not part of guild? Are there any suggestions to keep myself from making such assumptions (if this is the problem)?

Tutor Answer

The two statements you're pointing to are not mutually exclusive. The first statement basically means that members of the guild were forbidden from taking action against other members -- basically, they were absolutely not allowed to go after other people on their "team," for lack of a better way to put it. Notice, too, that this would seem to indicate that misrepresentation -- if it occurred -- would actually go unpunished, because canon lawyers would be forbidden from going after those they knew that did it!

What we do know from P1 is that "the initiative for disciplinary action apparently came from a dissatisfied client." So, we need to find an answer choice that would serve as a reason that a lawyer would be disciplined for failing a client. There's only one good answer for that, and it's AC (A): betraying a client's secrets would logically dissatisfy that client.

Student Question

why is “With this theoretical advantage there is a practical disadvantage, however.” not the conclusion? if I ask how do I know this, I feel like the rest of the stimulus that follows it seems to support it.

Tutor Answer

This one is tricky -- I'd say you're one step away from seeing the full picture here. I actually think that if I had to say that a sentence in the stimulus was the "conclusion," then I would pick the sentence you did. The problem is that this question is one of the rare ones where the conclusion isn't a sentence you can pull from the stimulus.

If I told you that "with this theoretical advantage there is a practical disadvantage, however," and asked you what that disadvantage was, you would tell me that analog systems struggle when the system is reproduced several times. From there, it wouldn't be difficult at all to pick AC (E).

If you can't find the language you want for the answer choice mimicking a sentence in the stimulus, take the sentence you think the conclusion might be and ask yourself "is there anything here that might make more sense if it was less vague?" Here, the sentence from the stimulus says there's a problem, but it doesn't specify what the weakness is or what its impact on the analog systems are. You have to fill that out yourself -- something I know you're capable of doing, because this question is super tricky!

Student Question

I initially chose C but opted for B during blind review. I can see that the flaw in methodology that (B) includes causes it to be disanalogous (mimicking an echo of an internal stimuli vs. checking behavioral responses to purely external stimuli; i.e., prey. I can also agree that (D) is the strongest analogue to the original study. My question is: If there were an answer choice identical in logical quality to (C), but instead of occurring near the animal’s home, occurred in an area where the animal typically patrols while seeking out food, would it be stronger than (C)? I look at (C) as having a minor flaw, in that the original study was conducted on the basis of the animals’ typical behavior (patrolling) while in the process of feeding/hunting for prey. The animal in (C) being at home indicates they may be in a state of relaxation rather than active hunting, so the stimulus’ effectiveness may not be relevant near the animal’s place of usual inhabitance. I think that this is a reasonable assumption, since home is associated with a particular type of behaviour (rest) that should exclude hunting, usually used for sleep or relaxation. While it might be possible that the animal is always looking for prey or would incidentally catch prey if it were conveniently located at its home, it is equally likely that the stimuli in (C) - heat - would elicit a response from the animal on the basis that its home usually does not have that stimuli, since home is a broadly familiar environment to an animal which inhabits the home. Introducing heat to the animal’s home could cause the animal to notice that difference for many reasons, perhaps because it is unusual to typical conditions at the home, and cause the animal to go near it and attack. The scientist’s goal in (C), therefore, seems to have a flaw that the original study did not, since it specifically targeted the seals in the open ocean during patrolling behavior.

Tutor Answer

I'm tempted to say that your hypothetical answer is stronger here. I like what you're attempting here -- twisting the answer choices around to see what they would look like if they were correct is something I did while I was studying. It looks to me like the reframed version of AC (D) fixes what I would identify as the major problem with that answer.

While I'm not qualified to say whether or not it would be an objectively correct answer, I can tell you that I would personally pick your reframed version of AC (D) over AC (C) if the two were side by side.

Student Question

Hello! For this question, can you explain a little more why E is wrong? I saw negligence which matched the passage. The passage also never mentions “owners” when in reference to the punitive approach, so expanding to employees seems logical to the individuals mentioned in the passage. Thank you!

Tutor Answer

The key with questions like this is that it's not enough to word match or think the answer is probably right -- you need affirmative evidence. To that end, you noted that the passage never mentions "owners." That's actually a pretty good indicator that the answer you're looking at might be wrong.

Let's say that you liked AC (E), because you thought it might be right on vibes. This is a thing that I have done many times! The next step is this: can you find any other answer choice that has a sentence -- even two sentences -- of explicit support in the passage?

That's what AC (A) has that AC (E) doesn't. The passage says that under the punitive theory, "insolvent debtors were thought to be breaking sacrosanct social contracts." Basically, if you didn't pay back your loans, you were viewed as having committed a massive social wrong (think drunk driving -- it's a crime, in no small part because you're breaking the social contract that you have with others not to put them in harm's way).

I'm not saying that defender of the punitive method would hate AC (E). What I'm saying is that we have no idea what they would or wouldn't think, and that's generally not going to get you to the correct answer on a question like this in an RC section.

Student Question

I am confused on this question as passage A does not say anything about pharmaceutical’s either. Why would it not be C?

Tutor Answer

This is a great question. We're asked which one of the answers is a topic discussed in Passage B ("PB") and not in Passage A ("PA"). That language is a little confusing, and when I hit a question like this, I like to break it down into a two-fold test. To be the right answer, the answer choice has to state a topic that:

• Appears in PB, and

• Does not appear in PA

So, if it appears in both, it's wrong. If it doesn't appear in either, it's also wrong.

AC (C) lists the topic: "the role of scientific research in supplying public goods." It immediately satisfies the first part of the test (appears in PB, see, e.g. "... the critical role of science in the modern "information economy" means that what was previously seen as a public good is being transformed into a market commodity"). However, it's also in PA: "The recent tendency to treat research findings as commodities, tradable for cash, threatens this tradition and the role of research as a public good." Because of this, it cannot be the correct answer.

AC (A) doesn't mention pharmaceuticals. Instead, it lists a broad topic: "the blurring of the legal distinction between discovery and invention." This does not appear anywhere in PA, but absolutely appears in PB, almost verbatim:

"... have led to a blurring of both the legal distinction between discovery and invention." (P3)"

That makes this the correct answer.

Student Question

What does "they will do best to eschew the lake trout’s summer haunts" mean? and what role does it play in the argument? I thought this part also could be a missing link that could have turned out as a necessary assumption AC.

Tutor Answer

"They will do best to eschew the lake trout’s summer haunts" means that the fishermen will -- and should -- avoid fishing in the place where the lake trout swim in the summer. It's a prescriptive claim: what the fishermen should do if they're trying to catch lake trout.

It plays a key role in the argument: it's the conclusion, and the only way it can be true is if -- in deep temperate lakes that have ice residues on the surface -- late-winter "turnover" has not yet occurred. This is because if turnover has occurred, then the lake trout will not be found at the surface level, and the fishermen would be totally fine to fish in the place that the lake trout spend their summers.

Student Question

“The explanation of this discrepancy is that the proportion of jobs offering such a disability benefit has greatly increased in recent years.” I’m having trouble understanding this explanation is trying to say, is it saying that the percentage of young people receiving disability benefit is higher because there’s more jobs that offers disability benefit? As in, the older generation are not getting the benefits right now because they were disabled when no benefit was being offered not because they were not disabled? I thought if you qualify for disability benefit, you would get it regardless where you worked as long as there’s history of employment? Please help, thank you!

Tutor Answer

Part of the reason you might be struggling here is that this is a weaken question. That means the explanation you quoted is supposed to be a little difficult to understand -- your job is to point out the most obvious reason why the explanation is difficult to understand.

That said, I'd be a little cautious with your reasoning as described in this request, because it seems like it might rely on information you cannot bring into the problem. You said:

"I thought if you qualify for disability benefit, you would get it regardless where you worked as long as there’s history of employment?"

To the extent of my knowledge, that's generally true in the real world. However, that's not information we can import into LSAT-land. All we know is that the explanation provided for the percentage of people receiving disability benefit payments is that "jobs offering that benefit have increased." To assume that those jobs give benefits in line with our own experience with jobs is to infer too much.

Instead, you should assume that the jobs give the benefit, but that it might end at some point. Then, you should pick the answer that best shows that the benefits come to an end before the drop-off in disability benefits that exists in the stimulus. That answer, to me, is AC (E).

Student Question

I solved this mathematically, and wanted to know if this is correct aswell as how I could’ve done it without using math.

Tutor Answer

No, I do not believe that you could solve this question without math. A baseline level of mathematical capability is necessary to solve certain LSAT questions. To be clear, you'll never need to solve differential equations to succeed on the LSAT, but the ability to work with averages, percentages, and fractions is absolutely critical to correctly answer certain questions (including this one).

Student Question

Im confused on this question why you cant take the contrapositive and get D as the answer

Tutor Answer

The argument says:

• If Valid Contract -> One Party Accepts Legitimate Offer from Another

• If Reasonably Believe Made in Jest -> NOT Legitimate Offer

The answer you're referring to says that Hal made an offer such that Lea could not believe it to be made in jest. I actually agree that this indicates that Hal made a legitimate offer to Lea and that she accepted that offer, based on the contrapositive of the second statement above.

Here's the thing: even if we have acceptance of a legitimate offer, do we have a contract?

The answer is no: acceptance of a legitimate offer is a requirement for a contract to be valid, but there might be other things the contract lacks. For example, Hal's offer to Lea might have been utterly legitimate, but Hal also could have included a clause stating that Lea had to set fire to her house upon signing. That would clearly have been coercive, and would likely have nullified the contract. Just because you have a necessary condition (acceptance of the offer) doesn't mean you have the sufficient condition (a contract). All you have is one of the requirements that might indicate that you aren't precluded from having a valid contract.

Student Question

For this question I thought “since” would indicate a sufficient condition which caused me to get the answer wrong.

Tutor Answer

I don't want to automatically preclude "since" from ever indicating the presence of a sufficient condition, since I guess it could happen on an advanced question. However, anecdotally, I have never seen a sufficient condition prefaced with "since" on the LSAT. Generally, sufficient conditions are prefaced with "if," which indicates the presence of a causal relationship.

Student Question

Can you give me a better reasoning for why A is correct and B is wrong

Tutor Answer

The passage tells us that objectivism has supported most Western intellectual systems (Paragraph One). That means that these systems are all rooted in objectivism, meaning we can equate a problem with objectivism to a problem that arises in those systems.

The author states that a "serious flaw in objectivism is that there is no such thing as the neutral, objective observer." AC (B) states that the aforementioned intellectual systems "have generally remained unskewed by particular points of view." Clearly, this can't be true. If there is no such thing as a neutral observer, then the systems cannot be unbias: they are, after all, operated by non-neutral observers.

AC (A), on the other hand, states that the systems "have long assumed the possibility of a neutral depiction of events." This is supported, because the passage tells us that the position of objectivism is that there is a "single neutral description of each event that is unskewed by any particular point of view and that has a privileged position over all other accounts."