Q19 - Trainer: An athlete developed lower back pain

[christine.defenbaugh]

Question Type:
Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Heating pads are generally more effective than stretching.
Evidence: Athlete got hurt. First tried stretching for a few days - didn't work. Then tried heating pad. After a few days, no pain!

Answer Anticipation:
First, this is a flaw EXCEPT! Wow, FOUR FLAWS to find. Crazy. Either there's an epic number of flaws in a short argument, or the answers are going to express the same fundamental flaw a few different ways.
Note the "generally" in the conclusion. The evidence is only about one particular athlete, with one injury. Everything we know is specific to that event and that person. Making broad generalizations off of that is a huge flaw, for a million reasons.
A second major flaw here is the classic causation/correlation mix up. Sure, the pain got better after she used the heating pad, but does that mean the heating pad is really responsible? Be ready to employ your standard attack language on causation flaws.

Correct answer:
A

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Out of scope - and as such, is the right answer. Raises a new concept - healing the underlying injury. Don't care! Also note that this is already accepting that the conclusion is true by saying "even if X is more effective than Y". If we're already accepting the conclusion and noting something else, then we're not pointing out a flaw.

(B) Causation/Correlation! Classic attack - maybe it's just a coincidence. LSAT doesn't usually trot out the 'coincidence' attack (favoring the reverse causation and third party joint causation more often), but it's should be in our standard repertoire for causation flaws.

(C) Representativeness! If her experience isn't representative, we can't conclude anything 'generally' about back pain, heating pads, and stretching.

(D) Representativeness! If the effectiveness changes based on underlying cause, then each individual experience is by definition not representative of the whole - and we can't conclude things 'generally'.

(E) Representativeness! This opens up the world of stretching - if there are various different ways to stretch that have various effectiveness, then we can't leap to conclusions about stretching 'generally'.

Takeaway/Pattern:
A classic wrong answer style for many argument questions is the form "Even if the conclusion is true, blah blah blah". Accepting the conclusion to be true pretty much automatically means you can't be 1) pointing out an assumption, 2) weakening or strengthening the argument or 3) pointing out a flaw. All of that work is between the premise and the conclusion, not after you've already accepted the conclusion!

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