I am not much of a diagrammer so not sure how helpful my advice would be but for these if you can get a great understanding of the stem on your initial read, you can carefully skim the AC's and use POE to help narrow down the more attractive answers. When getting these during a full section, I suggest flagging/skipping and then coming back at the end with the time you have left to answer so you don't have to rush through.

Even though this is 9 years later, maybe this will help someone else who stumbles upon this question. For me the key part of the stimulus is "since the playwrights wish the audience to empathize", made me think to myself for the answer choice, what will describe the playwrights in a light that would support the attempt to have the audience empathize with the protagonist. Then when reviewing the AC's, C, D, and E can easily be crossed out as they have no relation to anything mentioned in the stem. Leaving you with A and B, to get to answer choice A you would have to make a bold assumption that being critical implies some form of bias which has an overall affect of how the play is perceived. Too strong to make, and B fits what we were looking for.

@OliviaRob Any law schools making these changes would've done so ahead of time before opening their application for the cycle so what's on lsac now is final. Only app changes i've seen since opening is personal type of questions/format changes.

For me getting this problem correct boiled down to understanding the main support for the writer's argument. Their reasoning behind the success rate being so high is due to scientist being able to pursue issues they select themselves. It's fair to assume that from this point of view, and the further support provided, that the writer believes the success of their outcomes would differ if the notion behind how they chose the problems they addressed was changed.

@unknown @gtoma3, the answer choice is essentially reframing/rewording the part in the stimulus that states "characteristic of tyrants" as a "political condition" in AC E. First half of the stimulus gives one side of the argument, and the second half explains the critics beliefs which is that it had nothing to do with the psychological state. "Because Stalin's cruelty and deviousness are not more apparent" this shows their point of disagreement.

@torijallen what helps me for these types of questions is process of elimination and trying to zoom out as much as possible to understand how each sentence/word fits into the stimulus and what the author is trying to say. The stimulus starts with the notion of having carnations on St. Patrick's Day, then explains the process of trying to obtain them. The fact that it is difficult to breed them provides support for the florist of why they should stock up on white carnations. The second half of the last sentence also gives us more reasoning of why stocking up on white carnations is a better option than trying to breed/find naturally green carnations. The conclusive language is tricky in this question that is also used in AC E.