Q15 - Doctor: It is wrong for medical

[chike_eze]

This was tough for me too.

(C) = Correct. Contains the main elements. "not keep info confidential", "sharing info to prevent human suffering"

(A) I chose this initially. On review, I think what makes this wrong is that the researchers would have to "know" that their actions will cause suffering. The passage does not care if the researchers are aware one way or the other.

(B) No where in the passage do we know that preventing human suffering is "the most important moral principle", therefore, this principle does not quite fit.

[charles.dj.kim]

The only way i see that C is correct is that you are bringing to light an assumption, (not)share --> delay research --> human suffer

Conclusion: (not) share --> wrong

so the contrapositive of that is (not) human suffer --> (not) delay research --> share(or not confidential as stated in C)

Answer being (not) human suffer --> share(or not confidential)



My questions is... I don't see how this strengthens the argument because it doesn't help link premise to the conclusion (not) share --> wrong

Shouldn't the answer be more like human suffer --> wrong?...but that would be a sufficient answer...

So can a strengthen question strengthen it that little...?

Please help!

[ptewarie]

Nice question. The last few responses are well-articulated.
Just want to add that very very often, people get questions on LR and even other sections wrong because of "skimming" and not slowing down to read every word and understanding what they mean. I am guilty of this myself. I actually started taking LR sections by reading EVERY single word over and over again. Although I went over 35 minutes, I started acing my sections almost every time. Important points are to recognize both quantity(some, most, all, few) and frequency(never, always, sometimes) since they have a VERY Integral consequences on the strength of the argument.

In question 15, what jumps out is the word "may" on two instances. This tells me that nothing is conclusively established, and the argument is not a strong one. Thus, the principle must take that into consideration.




Here is how 15 can trick you.

a. On the outset, quick glance it seems right. Except look at the word " they KNOW will cause humans to suffer".
Nowhere in the stimulus are we given a reason to logically infer that if researchers withhold information, they also "know" that they are causing human suffering. They may think/hypothesize they are, but "knowing" as a matter of fact, that is not mentioned in the passage. Again, this conflicts with the "may" mentioned in the stimulus at two occasions.

b. " If the most important moral principle".... What?! This is not mentioned in the stimulus at all. So using this would be useless in this instance.
People would write it out:
most important moral principle to prevent suffering---> research confidential is false.

Not however, that this does not and will never trigger anything in the passage, because the sufficient condition is never mentioned, so it is useless.
It's like having a passage that states: John likes apples because they are red.

And then having a principle : If Santa comes to town, the apples are red. This has nothing to do with the passage.
Again, here it is establishing something conclusively, but the stimulus is a weak argument( "may). MOVE ON!

C. If it is POSSIBLE(bingo- goes together with "may") that sharing would prevent some unnecessary human suffering--> then medical professionals should not keep that information confidential.

this works! 1. It mentions all parts in stimulus 2. The keywords "possible" and "some" are consistent with strength of argument

[samuelfbaron]

If I could chime in... I believe that (A) is incorrect for all of the reasons above and it fails to match the tone of the stimulus. This is simply a principle question that seeks to justify the reasoning in the stimulus.

Upon initial reading, I too went with (A)... however what clued me in was the 'should never engage in' . That wording is far too strong to match the tone of the stimulus --> may be delayed --> may suffered = the correct answer should use similar wording in terms of tone --> probably

(A) is too strong to be the correct principle.

[christine.defenbaugh]

Wonderful discussion going on here guys! Some really great ideas, and some awesome elimination rationales for (A) and (B). I'd like to pull everything together for the sake of future readers, and clarify just a few things. Please continue to add to the discussion!

First, principle (support) questions are at their heart Strengtheners, just dressed in fancy syntax. They often come to the party dressed as Sufficient Assumptions, but they don't absolutely have to. As such, they are absolutely allowed to be 'too strong' for the conclusion. They almost always are, in some way!

Let's break it down:

Premise: If no share --> med. dev. delayed --> humans may suffer
Or: not sharing could cause humans to suffer
Conclusion:Wrong to not share!

We need an answer that helps bridge the gap from the conditional relationships to 'wrong to not share!' Answer (C) nails it. The trick is seeing that the if-trigger matches. If not sharing could cause humans to suffer, then it is possible that sharing could prevent human suffering. There's a lot of hedging here, and that's important. The if-trigger matches the premise, and the principle-result matches the conclusion.

Djjustin818 - I hesitate to say the "should not" could always mean "wrong", but in this context the language leap is a very tiny one. It's possible in some other context one "should not" do something for some not-wrong reason ("Oh, a new car? For me? You shouldn't have!"). Here, however, the context makes it clear that "should not" and "wrong" are functionally equivalent.

The Unprincipled
(A) if-trigger: if they know - did they?
*Note: "should never engage" is completely fine. Principles are allowed to be 'too strong'.
(B) if-trigger: if the most important moral principles is to prevent human suffereing - is it?
(D) Principle-result: should develop treatments fast. What about 'it's wrong not to share'?
(E) The conclusion was about the wrongness of the researchers not sharing, not the wrongness of the companies.


lhermary, I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'has it backwards'. The if-trigger matches the premise, and the principle-result matches the conclusion. Can you clarify your question?

[nflamel69]

Hi Christine,

I think Ihermary's question is that the stimulus said if not sharing, humans may suffer unnecessarily. So we need an answer that says if not sharing causes suffer, then we should not not keep it confidential. But the answer C says if sharing, then ... Basically shes saying how can we use an answer that says if sharing when the stimulus only says when not sharing.. hope that makes sense

[christine.defenbaugh]

Hi Christine,

I think Ihermary's question is that the stimulus said if not sharing, humans may suffer unnecessarily. So we need an answer that says if not sharing causes suffer, then we should not not keep it confidential. But the answer C says if sharing, then ... Basically shes saying how can we use an answer that says if sharing when the stimulus only says when not sharing.. hope that makes sense

Ahh, thanks for clarifying.

It's absolutely correct to be vigilante about illegal reversals of strict conditionals. But pay careful attention to the wording of the conditionals!

The stimulus does not say "If no share --> suffer", it merely says they MAY suffer. The not-sharing might possibly cause some suffering. If it does, and we remove the cause (the not-sharing), then we've removed that particular slice of suffering.

If I say that bungee-jumping may cause neck injury, then it's also true that NOT bungee-jumping may prevent some neck injuries - specifically, it prevents the ones I might have gotten from the act of bungee jumping!

It would absolutely be incorrect to say that "If share --> no suffering", as a categorical guarantee! But the correct principle doesn't say that. It merely says that sharing could prevent some suffering. This is not an illegal reversal, and is totally supportable by the premise: it is possible that sharing might prevent some suffering - specifically, the suffering the act of not-sharing might have caused!

Does that help clear things up a bit?

[laura.bach]

Hey, thank you so much for your help on this question. I just wanted to get some feedback on why I picked (B) initially and where I went wrong in my reasoning.

Conclusion: Even if companies want the research confidential, it is wrong to do so.

Why?

Premise: Because it might cause human suffering (by delaying medical treatments).

So?

Well... if we care about human suffering, then this is wrong. The argument assumes that we care about human suffering (more than other consequences of sharing).

I analogized to -
C: Even if your parents say no, you should go to the party.

Why?

If you don't go to the party, you may not see Jake.

So?

Well... if you care about seeing Jake (more than you care about what your parents say), then you should go to the party. Or, you would be justified if seeing Jake is the most important thing.

This makes (B) very tempting. (If "we care about suffering", then "confidentiality is wrong")

But wait!

I'm still on the edge of my seat, DO we care?

(B) still hasn't established that preventing human suffering is the most important moral principle? It just says, if you believe this, then it's wrong. But maybe we don't believe that, and then the argument isn't justified/strengthened.

(Back to my analogy): Well, if you care about Jake, you should go.

Does she care about Jake? We don't know. So we don't know if her decision to ignore her parents is justified.

(C) on the other hand definitely states that medical researchers should not keep research confidential because human suffering may result.

(Final analogy point): You should not listen to your parents if it's possible Jake will be there.


Case closed. She's justified in going to party. Hope Jake shows.


----
I would love to hear feedback on this train of thought. Thanks in advance!

[kyuya]

We are looking for a principle here:

The argument is basically this:

It is wrong for medical researchers to keep research confidential because it may cause suffering.

Now, we must find a principle that encompasses this argument sufficiently and helps to justify the doctors argument.

(A) This answer choice is too broad in scope. We don't know if they should never engage in any behaviour they know will cause humans to suffer - we only know that they shouldn't keep research confidential because people being hurt by this is unacceptable.

Think about this. Perhaps medical researchers promote the use of chemotherapy (would make people suffer), but does this mean they should never engage in it? What if there is no other means of treating someone's cancer? The point of this analogy is to show this: the stimulus focuses only on withholding research, and the fact this answer choice is too broad may actually lead to some unacceptable consequences for medical researchers / others in the medical profession.

Furthermore, I think the difficulty found in this question is that it plays on our non-LSAT common sense. We think that medical researchers shouldn't hurt people and it may cause us to choose this answer choice instinctively, but make sure to stick to the argument.

(B) The first part of this conditional in the answer choice should make it obvious this answer choice is wrong. We don't know if the most important moral principle is to prevent human suffering - we never speak about it. Therefore, the sufficient does not necessarily need to be triggered which makes this answer choice bad.

(C) Here is the right answer. It addresses both points of the argument, which were:

1.) shouldn't withhold info. Why?
2.) causing suffering because of this is bad.

Medical researchers should not keep info confidential (YES) if sharing it could prevent some unnecessary human suffering (YES). FIts the argument perfectly.

(D) This one is probably the most left field of the answer choices we have came up to at this point. It never speaks about developing treatments rapidly, but rather speaks about the dangers of withholding information.

(E) this answer choice can be seen as this in conditional form:

failure to share the research might delay development of effective medical treatments ----> wrong for any company to ask its medical researchers to keep their research confidential.

If we attempt to break down the stimulus into conditional statements, we might get something that looks like this (albeit a bit simplified).

If possible humans will be hurt by lack of research results --> wrong for medical researchers to keep confidential

The main difference here is the group (E) chooses to focus on. It focuses on the medical researchers as a group, when in the stimulus we are concerned with medical researchers (although companies are mentioned).

What is difficult about this answer choice is that under timed pressure, one may forget what the main subgroup we are concerned with (medical researchers) and confuse it with another sub group mentioned (companies they work for). The part of the stimulus "even if the companies for which they work" actually amounts to fluff in this argument, although the test writers make it into a somewhat attractive answer choice.

If you were stuck between (E) and (C) I would suggest going back to the core of the argument and you'll realize (E) focuses on an irrelevant group, and (C) will look a whole lot better.

[daijob]

I feel like the If part in the C just paraphrased the if part in the stimulus. Do you think it is permissible to think this way?
Does this happen a lot in justify questions?
How far can we treat they are interchangeable?

Thank you

[ohthatpatrick]

I'm not sure if I understood your question.

Are you asking if it's a problem that part of (C) matches the premise?

Or are you asking if it's a guaranteed correct answer that part of (C) matches the premise?

It is neither. We definitely WANT our correct answer to feel like 1/2 premise, 1/2 conclusion.

Principle questions are all about matching the terms/ideas used.

You can prephrase what you're looking for by simply saying,
"If Premise, then Conclusion".

I could express the stimulus equivalently by saying:
Hiding medical research can delay the development of effective medical treatments, thereby creating unnecessary human suffering. Therefore, it is wrong to hide medical research.

We would prephrase our desired answer as
"IF something would delay development of treatments and/or create unnecessary human suffering, THEN it is wrong to do it."

[lsat2016]

I'm not sure if I understood your question.


We would prephrase our desired answer as
"IF something would delay development of treatments and/or create unnecessary human suffering, THEN it is wrong to do it."

Hello,

I eliminated E on the basis that:

premise: not share -> delay -> suffer unnecessarily

but E: delay-> wrong

however, C: suffer unnecessarily -> wrong

since E does not connect suffer unnecessarily -> wrong, it is incorrect?

I chose C because it connects the last element (suffer unnecessarily) to the conclusion.

Is this a valid way of eliminating an answer choice??

[erikwoodward10]

A previous poster argued that A is incorrect because it is too broad in scope. I would argue that it is actually incorrect because it is too narrow in scope. Answer choice A qualifies the statement to what is known, but the stimulus provides a wider context--we're concerned with what "may" cause human suffering--thus known, and unknown.

If A said "may" instead of "that they know will", I'd argue that it would be just as good of an answer as C.

[ganbayou]

For some reason I felt C is negate IF/Then wrongly.
like,
Share→not delay→prevent suffer
not share→delay→suffer
Why is it allowed here?
It's like wrong contrapositive...

[andrewgong01]

I have spent close to an hour re-reading this problem and forum and I am still not understanding it. This argument seems a lot harder than similar problems in connecting the gap from the argument core

Choice "C" states If sharing prevents suffering then they should share. However, I just don't see how this solves the missing link in the argument.

The argument is No Share -->Delay drug research --> Suffering.
Contrapositive is No Suffering (i.e. prevent suffering) --> No delays--> Share

The conclusion we want to get to is We should share ; or, it is wrong to not share.

The gap is linking something about suffering with sharing

Choice "C" just does not seem to "connect" into the logic chain from the argument. We need something to link suffering with sharing but choice "c" just seems to be an illegal reversal/ negation in the link we need. We need something like "If there is suffering then it is wrong to not share or if there is suffering then we must mitigate the suffering " to conclude that not sharing is wrong. But choice "C" gives us a differnt link on if we can prevent suffering then we should share but preventing suffering is not in the chain. I guess my question is how does "C" link into the argument chain to allow us to conclude we should share because not sharing --> suffering.

[ohthatpatrick]

First of all, just be careful about caring too much that you put together a logic chain here.

It's ultimately just a Strengthen question.

(C) says
If sharing info would possibly prevent suffering, we should share it.
and the EVIDENCE in the argument told us
not sharing info would potentially create suffering.

Doesn't that fit rather nicely into
we should share info ?

I think were you got yourself confused is that you assembled the chain of logic in the Evidence:
no share --> delays --> suffering

But you weren't asking yourself the real question, "How do I get from this Evidence to the Conclusion".

PREM [no share -> delays -> suffering] -----> CONC [wrong to not share].

Since there is a common term there,
PREM [no share -> delays -> suffering] -----> CONC [wrong to not share].

we can predict that we want an idea that sounds something like
"It would be wrong to do something that results in delays and suffering"

If I say,
"Don't vote for Kathy. She'll solicit big donations from fossil fuel companies, making her feel indebted to them, leading her to strip away environmental regulations once she's in office, leading to more polluted lakes and rivers."

What principle do I need?
"Don't do something that would lead to more polluted lakes and rivers".

[andrewgong01]

Thank you for the response

I understand your pre-phase now : "It would be wrong to do something that results in delays and suffering" and the other example you gave. To translate this to a conditional, it is "If something results in suffering/delay then it is wrong to do the something"

But I still don't see how that fits "C" because it still looks like an illegal reversal /negation to me. "C" is

If sharing prevents some suffering then medical researcher should share.

I feel that "C" should have been If something results in suffering (NOT something that prevents suffering, the negation of the suffering) then it is wrong to do it (i.e. wrong to not share). In other words, there seems to be a slight mismatch or a degree of logical jump.

[ohthatpatrick]

(C) says
"If it's possible that sharing info would prevent unnecessary human suffering,
medical researchers shouldn't keep the info confidential."

Do we know from the Evidence whether
"sharing RESEARCH" would "prevent unnecessary human suffering"?

Yes we do, since NOT sharing research would lead to potential human suffering.

Since NOT sharing research would lead to potential human suffering,
sharing that research would potentially prevent that hypothetical suffering.

According to (C)'s rule, medical researchers should not keep their research confidential, which is a close match for the conclusion "it is wrong for medical researchers to keep their research confidential".

I think you're just getting caught up by only thinking about this conditionally, when it is a Strengthen question, so you don't need to be so mechanistic.

When the test says something like:
"Because I took the highway, I was late"
we can't 100% infer that
"If I hadn't taken the highway, I wouldn't have been late"
but that idea can still be a CORRECT ANSWER when you're being asked a fuzzier task like "Which is most supported".

Similarly, when we hear that
"If we don't share, human suffering may potentially happen"
we can't 100% prove that
"If we do share, human suffering will be prevented"
but it's close enough to work in the fuzzy world of Strengthen, especially since the rule is just "If it's POSSIBLE that sharing would prevent some suffering."

[fanshuhaodg]

It took me a while to think through this question but I think the key here is to understand that:

(1) As the below post points out, this is NOT SOUND: If -X (not sharing) --> Y (human suffering) = If X --> -Y.
(2) However, It is SOUND: (If -X --> Y) implies (If X, then it could be -Y). I.e., If not sharing guarantees suffering, sharing could prevent suffering.
(3) Further, it is also SOUND: (If -X, then it could be Y) implies (If X, then it could be -Y).

To see why - basically in (2), we know that not sharing is definitely a sufficient condition for suffering, when we take out that sufficient condition (i.e., when we share the research) from all the possible sufficient conditions in the world, we inevitably decrease the chance of suffering, no matter how small. That is why, logically, we arrived at the conclusion in (2) that sharing could prevent suffering (by taking out one sufficient condition, or basically one cause of suffering).

If the above reason makes sense, it is then not hard to see why (3) is also logically sound. In that case, although we are only taking out a potentially sufficient condition, we are still decreasing the chance of suffering, albeit in a lesser degree than in (2).

Hope it helps and other explanations welcomed.

Thank you for the response

I understand your pre-phase now : "It would be wrong to do something that results in delays and suffering" and the other example you gave. To translate this to a conditional, it is "If something results in suffering/delay then it is wrong to do the something"

But I still don't see how that fits "C" because it still looks like an illegal reversal /negation to me. "C" is

If sharing prevents some suffering then medical researcher should share.

I feel that "C" should have been If something results in suffering (NOT something that prevents suffering, the negation of the suffering) then it is wrong to do it (i.e. wrong to not share). In other words, there seems to be a slight mismatch or a degree of logical jump.