Read this article for some clarity on science concepts you'll likely encounter on the LSAT

J.Y. Ping

I'm shamelessly copying this from the front page of reddit:
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01100/full

Owing to the sheer length of the article, I don't think it's helpful to attempt to read it all in one go. If you can manage the feat, you will still want to often revisit the article to jog your memory. Instead, try to read this in over 50 days. One misconception corrected per day.

Today, please read the intro and phrase #1 "A gene for"

[Intro redacted, please read on frontiersin.org. Text for phrase #1 copied below]

(1) A gene for. The news media is awash in reports of identifying “genes for” a myriad of phenotypes, including personality traits, mental illnesses, homosexuality, and political attitudes (Sapolsky, 1997). For example, in 2010, The Telegraph (2010) trumpeted the headline, “‘Liberal gene’ discovered by scientists.” Nevertheless, because genes code for proteins, there are no “genes for” phenotypes per se, including behavioral phenotypes (Falk, 2014). Moreover, genome-wide association studies of major psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, suggest that there are probably few or no genes of major effect (Kendler, 2005). In this respect, these disorders are unlike single-gene medical disorders, such as Huntington’s disease or cystic fibrosis. The same conclusion probably holds for all personality traits (De Moor et al., 2012).

Not surprisingly, early claims that the monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A) gene is a “warrior gene” (McDermott et al., 2009) have not withstood scrutiny. This polymorphism appears to be only modestly associated with risk for aggression, and it has been reported to be associated with conditions that are not tied to a markedly heightened risk of aggression, such as major depression, panic disorder, and autism spectrum disorder (Buckholtz and Meyer-Lindenberg, 2013; Ficks and Waldman, 2014). The evidence for a “God gene,” which supposedly predisposes people to mystical or spiritual experiences, is arguably even less impressive (Shermer, 2015) and no more compelling than that for a “God spot” in the brain (see “God spot”). Incidentally, the term “gene” should not be confused with the term “allele”; genes are stretches of DNA that code for a given morphological or behavioral characteristic, whereas alleles are differing versions of a specific polymorphism in a gene (Pashley, 1994).

Darth Jurist

This is so awesome! J.Y. is the man for learning science passages. I found the family genetic behaviors one to be very enlightening. Everyone tells me that my brother and I are so much alike, yet we are not from the same bloodline. My brother, being adopted, will appreciate seeing this!

Thanks J.Y.!

The Aviator

Great source! Extracurricular reading like this gives me more confidence when doing RC.

Cant Get Right

Even LSAT aside, I love this and look forward to correcting myself on these. I’d hate to think I’ve been running around saying the scientific equivalent of “Hurricane Katrina decimated the Gulf Coast.” Gross.

quinnxzhang

@"Cant Get Right" said:
I’d hate to think I’ve been running around saying the scientific equivalent of “Hurricane Katrina decimated the Gulf Coast.” Gross.

There's nothing wrong with saying this. Technical language is different from ordinary speech. There's no setting today where using "decimated" in that context would cause confusion.

J.Y. Ping

(2) Antidepressant medication. Medications such as tricyclics, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, are routinely called “antidepressants.” Yet there is little evidence that these medications are more efficacious for treating (or preventing relapse for) mood disorders than for several other conditions, such as anxiety-related disorders (e.g., panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder; Donovan et al., 2010) or bulimia nervosa (Tortorella et al., 2014). Hence, their specificity to depression is doubtful, and their name derives more from historical precedence—the initial evidence for their efficacy stemmed from research on depression (France et al., 2007)—than from scientific evidence. Moreover, some authors argue that these medications are considerably less efficacious than commonly claimed, and are beneficial for only severe, but not mild or moderate, depression, rendering the label of “antidepressant” potentially misleading (Antonuccio and Healy, 2012; but see Kramer, 2011, for an alternative view).

Source: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01100/full

Cant Get Right

@quinnxzhang It wouldn't confuse anybody, it's just a pet peeve of mine- especially when it's applied to Katrina, as I'm from south Mississippi, lol.

I wonder if some of these misconceptions, like antidepressants, are prevalent even within the medical community. It wouldn't surprise me for something like antidepressants. From some of the entries in the article, it does sound like many of these are used inappropriately not only in the vernacular but also frequently in research as well.

dcdcdcdcdc

Thanks! Just checking in on the LSAT-specific reason this article its usefulness. I appreciate the real-world utility of the article. Would you say that the language and writing style employed in the article are most helpful for LSAT reading comprehension, or is it that the subject matter itself and the correction of misconceptions are the primary utility for the LSAT?

Cant Get Right

@dcdcdcdcdc To me it really is both. It's great reading, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of RC passages. And it's science related which can be intimidating, so it's good to be practiced in that. Specifically, weird science terms can really trip people up, so being familiar with some terms definitely won't hurt. I think after working through this list, new science terminology might be slightly more approachable.

J.Y. Ping

Yeah, it's both - for example, in "(1) A gene for" you get the MC, then supporting examples. That's LSAT structure. You also get substantive knowledge, which is great. By the way, make good use of the dictionary when reading this. I looked up "polymorphism" because I had no idea what that word meant.

J.Y. Ping

This reads like an LR stimulus to me.

(3) Autism epidemic. Enormous effort has been expended to uncover the sources of the “autism epidemic” (e.g., King, 2011), the supposed massive increase in the incidence and prevalence of autism, now termed autism spectrum disorder, over the past 25 years. The causal factors posited to be implicated in this “epidemic” have included vaccines, television viewing, dietary allergies, antibiotics, and viruses.

Nevertheless, there is meager evidence that this purported epidemic reflects a genuine increase in the rates of autism per se as opposed to an increase in autism diagnoses stemming from several biases and artifacts, including heightened societal awareness of the features of autism (“detection bias”), growing incentives for school districts to report autism diagnoses, and a lowering of the diagnostic thresholds for autism across successive editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Gernsbacher et al., 2005; Lilienfeld and Arkowitz, 2007). Indeed, data indicate when the diagnostic criteria for autism were held constant, the rates of this disorder remained essentially constant between 1990 and 2010 (Baxter et al., 2015). If the rates of autism are increasing, the increase would appear to be slight at best, hardly justifying the widespread claim of an “epidemic.”