Q24 - In a recent study of arthritis

[renata.gomez]

Hi!

Ive been reading this question and responses for a while and I don't 100% understand what makes B wrong..

But I might be onto something. Could B be wrong because the beliefs in the stimulus are impacting the TIMING of the increased pain and not necessarily the level of intensity? Im not completely convinced but it was the best I could come up with. the stimulus, even after reading all of the posts above, seems to indicate that their beliefs are impacting how they access their pain level.

Thanks!

[renata.gomez]

Hi! I would greatly appreciate a response!! ^^

[BillyM23]

After much much thought this is the way i have come to confidently dismiss B.

“B) indicates that arthritis sufferers’ beliefs about the causes of the pain they feel may affect their assessment of the intensity of that pain. “

Firstly, What support do we really have for this choice? While it is true that if you asked one of these people they would say that weather causes their pain, how much do we know about how their various (which is what the plural (“beliefs”) implies) beliefs effect their pain?

At best we my say that the single belief in weather may effect the perceived intensity of their pain but simply put this isn’t enough to draw a conclusion about beliefs in general.

Secondly, the topic of the stimulus is the correlation, or lack thereof, between weather and arthritis pain. B answer choice is tantamount to the scientists drawing a conclusion tangential to the purpose of their study in the first place. For the purposes of he LSAT this is a no-no.

You may say C does this as well but does it? C is affirms that there is no correlation and making a remark about their findings whereas B is claiming a completely outside conclusion.

[LilyY729]

Hi all,

I've been reading the posts and found that what I had in mind for answer choice B doesn't focus on what most of you had been discussing. I am not sure this is entirely right, but hopefully it sheds some light on alternative thinking.

I think the stimulus is saying two things: 1) the researchers did not find any correlation between pain intensity and weather factors; 2) the sufferers in the study who believed the correlation gave widely varying accounts of the time delay between the occurrence of the feature of their increased intensity of the pain.

We are asked to draw a conclusion based on the two information. Many of you have been discussing what it means to "indicates that arthritis sufferers' beliefs about the causes of the pain they feel may affect their assessment of the intensity of that pain". What makes me first eliminate this answer is that I don't think "assessment of the intensity of that pain" equals to "widely varying accounts of the time delay". At most, they are giving a description of the time delay rather than giving an assessment of the intensity based on the info we have.

And from my first read, the message that I got is that researchers failed to find the correlation but sufferers asserted or were convinced that there is a correlation, and the evidence they gave is not really consistent. This means that there is an inconsistency between the finding and the assertions. That's why I initially was choosing between C and D, but since the stimulus says that there is no correlation found, then C is what is left.

[JeremyK460]

the main focus of (b) is the subjects's beliefs about the CAUSE of their arthritis pain

there's nothing in the argument about the CAUSE of their arthritis pain
the argument is about the factors AFFECTING their degree of pain

what if someone got arthritis by playing the guitar too much
or another subject got arthritis by being a professional athlete

the weather isn't causing the pain, the weather is seemingly intensifying it

but (b) isn't about the cause of the intensifier, it's about the cause of the pain in general