I think he lowkey does it to get us used to sifting information to get to the most important stuff because the LSAT gives you so much hard jargon and you have to sift through it. If you have practice doing that then you're probs in better shape

I am sure you have found your answers by now, but, as a person who is getting their BS in a science and also prepping for the LSAT here is my take:

While it is true that you, technically, do not need outside information, you do need to be able to critique all forms of an argument. Scientific experiments are technically at their core scientists making arguments with their evidence and, you, as a future lawyer, should approach with the skepticism to poke logical holes. It just so happens to do that it is easier to name some of the definitions you commonly see with scientific experiments.

In fact, I was told that the LSAT disguises certain arguments and skills you practice on the LSAT that have lawyerly words associated to them. Like you do not need to know what the logical fallacies are, but you may encounter them and have to prove them wrong, etc.

Plus things like this could be applied to outside the experiment realm. When someone makes an assumption on a much larger group based on the observation off of personal experience (there is a automobile question on PT 140), like the sampling bias, those people ought to be misguided because there is no way 2 cars is representative of every car of that make and model. It is not technically an experiment or framed as one, but it is the same principle.

At its roots, science is applying logic to answer questions, so it is really useful for the LSAT and beyond to understand how and why scientists make these causal arguments bulletproof, because these same reasons are why many arguments are not bulletproof.

Knowing how an experiment is supposed to be ran allows you to approach experiments with extreme skepticism and find if there are pitfalls in them on the exam. But, thats just the thing, unless you know how they are supposed to go and how one can draw strong correlations or make conclusions on them, then you wont be able to figure out why something is flawed, or why it is not valid to draw the conclusion.

Say, you have an expert witness on the stand for trial and you are the defense attorney, it is crucial to the success of the case that the jury disregards the experts testimony so it is your job as a lawyer to poke holes in that experiment.

Similarly, the LSAT is going to see if you can logically find reasons that claims made from scientists experiments could be weakened or strengthened using the concept of the ideal experiment.

If something asks you to strengthen the argument and it would indeed verify the controls, GREAT! As long as that most strengthens the argument, that could be your answer. If you're asked to weaken, and one of the answer choices blows a hole in the controls? This invalidates the experiment and could VERY likely be your answer.

My Diagnostic was PT 140, and I believe there is a question that does this on the test. it had something to do with smells and sulfur! So, you will encounter the science question and you will have to figure out how to reasonably and logically criticize it!

Perhaps It is because I did STEM in my undergrad, but this is so incredibly important to the LSAT and the actual law. Say an expert witness for a case discusses that X was caused by Y as determined by an experiment. If they did not account for Z, and Z occurs in this case and could be correlated to the outcome of Y, how could we conclusively blame X for causing Y? Z Could very well have caused Y!

So if we were to weaken an argument that X caused Y, and one of the options was discussing Z, which was also present and could lead to Y, that would significantly weaken the argument that X caused Y