LSAT 134 – Section 3 – Question 22

LSAT 134 - Section 3 - Question 22

October 2011

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT134 S3 Q22
+LR
Most strongly supported +MSS
Sampling +Smpl
A
10%
159
B
24%
164
C
46%
168
D
8%
160
E
11%
160
157
166
176
 +Hardest 146.872 +SubsectionMedium

Science writer: Scientists’ astounding success rate with research problems they have been called upon to solve causes the public to believe falsely that science can solve any problem. In fact, the problems scientists are called upon to solve are typically selected by scientists themselves. When the problems are instead selected by politicians or business leaders, their formulation is nevertheless guided by scientists in such a way as to make scientific solutions feasible. Scientists are almost never asked to solve problems that are not subject to such formulation.

Summary

Scientists appear to have a very high success rate at solving problems they’re called upon to solve, and this creates the false impression that scientists can solve any problem. But the apparently very high success rate is a result of scientists’ ability to pick the problems they solve or to formulate the problems they’re asked to solve in a way that makes a scientific solution possible. In other words, the kinds of problems they’re tackling are an unrepresentative sample of problems overall.

Strongly Supported Conclusions

The high problem-solving success rate of scientists wouldn’t be as high if they tried to solve the entire set of problems.

The public overestimates the ability of scientists to solve problems.

A
If a problem can be formulated in such a way as to make a scientific solution feasible, scientists will usually be called upon to solve that problem.

Unsupported. Although many problem scientists are called upon to solve can be formulated in ways that make science solutions feasible, this doesn’t tell us about most of the problems that can be formulated in that way.

B
Any problem a scientist can solve can be formulated in such a way as to make a scientific solution feasible.

Unsupported, because the stimulus doesn’t tell us about any problem a scientist can solve. We only know about problems scientists have been called upon to solve.

C
Scientists would probably have a lower success rate with research problems if their grounds for selecting such problems were less narrow.

Strongly supported, because we know that people have a false impression of scientists’ ability to solve problems from the success rate of problems they’re called upon to solve. These problems are likely unrepresentative set; success rate is likely higher for those problems.

D
Most of the problems scientists are called upon to solve are problems that politicians and business leaders want solved, but whose formulation the scientists have helped to guide.

Unsupported. We know that most problems scientists are called on to solve are selected by scientists. But we don’t know whether any portion of these are problems politicians and business leaders want solved.

E
The only reason for the astounding success rate of science is that the problems scientists are called upon to solve are usually selected by the scientists themselves.

Antisupported, because we also know that part of the reason for the success rate is scientists’ ability to formulate the problem chosen by politicians and business leaders in a way that makes scientific solutions feasible.

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LSAT PrepTest 134 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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