PT20.S1.Q02 - a director of the rexx pharmaceutical company

Accounts Playable

http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-20-section-1-question-02/
Ok, I am pretty pissed I missed this because I felt like I got it right when I did it. I didn't even mark it for BR. As a CPA, the equivocation of a few words in the stimulus and answer choices makes this question pretty terrible IMO. Are we supposed to assume that "administered to people" in answer choice A is the same idea as "administering a vaccine"? Administering to people to me means giving people the shot at the doctors office while administering a vaccine to me means the administration costs (SG&A costs) within the firm; these are two totally unique concepts. This is worse than usual writing for the LSAT.

This is a weaken question. It is from a pretty old test, and I feel like the wording on this one reflects that.

A director at a pharm company argues that the developmental costs (production costs) for new vaccines that the health department has requested should be subsidized since the marketing costs (selling costs) promises to be less profitable (this last part makes no sense to me, and I think it shows how sloppy the LSAT writers can be sometimes when they write about business, but whatever). The director argued that the sales are going to be lower since people only take the drug once (OK, this sentence makes more sense relative to the last one).

What I am looking for: Maybe the fact that they only take the drug once is not relevant. This step was pretty difficult to do for this one.

Answer A: This is the correct answer, but I still take issue with the wording. How do we equivocate administration of the vaccines with sales (or anything that relates to the director's argument)? I just don't see how this affects the argument. If the drugs are administered to more people (i.e. doctors give the shots to more people), why does the business care directly? The pharm company only cares about selling the vaccines to hospitals and doctors, what they do with the drugs after the fact is irrelevant to the business (purchasing the drugs is a sunk cost to the hospital). What if the doctor gives away the vaccine for free? The pharm has already made its money on sale (and based off the argument from the director, less than what it would get from other drugs) regardless of who actually gets the shots. I think there are huge problems with this answer choice, and I think more modern LSATS would use tighter wording.

Answer B: This is irrelevant to the argument. So what if "many" vaccines are designed to prevent things.

Answer C: So what.

Answer I don't care about other pharm companies. We are talking about Rexx.

Answer E: This is what I chose. I chose this because I interpreted the costs of administrating a vaccine as part of administrative costs within the firm. If the pharm companies don't bear this cost, then this attacks the support that they should be subsidized. Apparently, we are supposed to assume that the "cost of administering a vaccine" is what I interpreted A's predicate to mean. However, this answer would run into the same problem that I think makes A incorrect also.

To hell with this question.

c.janson35

First off, one definition of administer is "to make application of; give" which is consistent with the way that it is used in the premises and answer choices, and "administering the medicine" is a fairly common usage of the word.

What you should focus on is the part that you say makes no sense: the author is claiming that the marketing of vaccines is less profitable (I.E. Lower sales) because of the fact ("in support of this claim") that vaccines are only administered to patients once. This is the huge flaw though! Ok, vaccines may be given only once, but what if every citizen in the country is given the vaccine? Then the numbers game they are playing here would shift tremendously to the vaccine, even though other medicines to treat diseases may be given more than once. This is exactly the flaw that answer choice A points out, too, and it really hurts the argument. With this new information, we have reason to believe that the new vaccine will be in much wider circulation hence more money (even if docors are giving them for free, as you point out, they still are likely to be bought by hospitals/doctors from the company in order to administer to patients; this kind of assumption--that they may give them for free and therefore no money will be exchanged--is far fetched though.

E is incorrect because it doesn't deal with the fact that many more people could be taking vaccines. More importantly, it does not attack the relationship between the premises and the conclusion as it does not relate to the sales of the drug.

DumbHollywoodActor

I think you might be overcomplicating this problem and bringing too much of your own knowledge to bear on the argument.

@"Accounts Playable" said:
The pharm company only cares about selling the vaccines to hospitals and doctors, what they do with the drugs after the fact is irrelevant to the business (purchasing the drugs is a sunk cost to the hospital).

That’s a huge assumption to make, even if you’re right 99% of the time. Since we’re looking for a weakening answer, we want an explanation for why the developmental costs for new vaccines that the health department has requested should NOT be subsidized by the government despite the LIKELIHOOD that sales will be would be lower because each vaccine is administered only once. There’s the gap in the argument: Just because each vaccine is administered only once doesn’t guarantee (however likely) that the sales will be lower.

Answer E almost seems to strengthen the argument because if the costs are rarely borne by the pharmaceutical company, we shouldn’t expect the pharmaceutical company to do so in this case. I say “seems” because it’s not a very good reason: it’s a “what’s happened in the past doesn’t guarantee what happens in the future” flaw.

Answer A: If Vaccines are administered to many more people than are most other pharmaceutical products, then it calls into the question just how low the profits of the vaccine might be. It attacks the gap previously mentioned.

I’m sure this won’t ease the anger you have for this question, but I think it brings up an issue you might have to deal with in the future: letting life experience cloud your analysis of the argument. I do it all the time too. Not on this one, though, because I have no idea how pharmaceuticals are sold.

DumbHollywoodActor

@c.janson35 You beat me every time!