LSAT 133 – Section 3 – Question 11

LSAT 133 - Section 3 - Question 11

June 2011

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT133 S3 Q11
+LR
Necessary assumption +NA
Net Effect +NetEff
Link Assumption +LinkA
A
23%
161
B
48%
166
C
5%
158
D
8%
160
E
17%
160
153
164
176
 +Hardest 147.69 +SubsectionMedium

People who browse the web for medical information often cannot discriminate between scientifically valid information and quackery. Much of the quackery is particularly appealing to readers with no medical background because it is usually written more clearly than scientific papers. Thus, people who rely on the web when attempting to diagnose their medical conditions are likely to do themselves more harm than good.

Summary
The author concludes that people who rely on the web when tring to diagnose their medical conditions are likely to do themselves more harm than good. Why?
Because those people can’t distinguish between what’s scientifically valid and scientifically invalid.

Notable Assumptions
Notice that the idea of “doing themselves more harm than good” is a new concept that isn’t mentioned in the premise. So we know the author must assume something about what leads to someone doing themselves more harm than good.
To go further, we can anticipate a more specific connection taking the author from the premise to the conclusion. The author thinks that people who cannot discriminate between scientifically valid information and scientifically invalid information are likely to do themselves more harm than good. Or, in other words, in order to avoid being more likely to do more harm than good when relying on the web to diagnose oneself, one must be able to distinguish between scientifically valid and invalid information.

A
People who browse the web for medical information typically do so in an attempt to diagnose their medical conditions.
Not necessary, because even if this isn’t typical, the argument applies to those people who do rely on the web to diagnose their medical conditions, however rare those people might be.
B
People who attempt to diagnose their medical conditions are likely to do themselves more harm than good unless they rely exclusively on scientifically valid information.
Necessary, because if it were not true — if people can rely on something besides scientifically valid information and still be unlikely to do themselves more harm than good — then the fact people can’t distinguish between scientifically valid and invalid information wouldn’t matter. Under the negation of (B), people who sometimes rely in invalid info because they can’t tell that it’s invalid won’t necessarily be likely to do themselves more harm than good.
C
People who have sufficient medical knowledge to discriminate between scientifically valid information and quackery will do themselves no harm if they rely on the web when attempting to diagnose their medical conditions.
Not necessary, because the argument concerns what happens to people who CANNOT distinguish between valid and invalid info. The author doesn’t need to think that people who CAN distinguish will do no harm to themselves by relying on the web.
D
Many people who browse the web assume that information is not scientifically valid unless it is clearly written.
The argument concerns people who rely on the web when trying to diagnose their medical conditions. But many people may browse the web who don’t rely on the web for diagnosis; the author doesn’t have to assume anything about those people.
E
People attempting to diagnose their medical conditions will do themselves more harm than good only if they rely on quackery instead of scientifically valid information.
The author believes that relying on the web for diagnosis when you can’t distinguish between scientifically valid and invalid info will make it likely that you’ll do yourself more harm than good. But the author doesn’t assume this kind of reliance is necessary to harm yourself. We might harm ourselves in other ways. This answer would be better if we replaced “only if” with “if.”

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LSAT PrepTest 133 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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