Q24 - Ethicist: In general it is wrong

[sgorginian]

I was quickly able to narrow it down to C and E.

A: out of scope.Cross it out!
B: although true in real life, knowledge of patient knowing they are undergoing experimental treatment is unrelated to what we are talking about. Out!
D: talking about best treatments in general. Author is talking about best treatments in Emergency situations. Get rid of it.

C was attractive to me, and hence my answer, because it makes sense for the author to assume that you do nonconsensual research if and only if you will get beneficial results.

I negated (E) the right of informed patient is NOT outweighed by benefits of medical research. This does destroy the argument, and hence the original stat,net is the assumption. But I don't know why C is wrong.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Really good work! Textbook 170s thinking.

Think about it though... Answer choice (C) doesn't say "if, and only if" but simply "only if." Big difference.

There is a gap in this argument. We know that "knowledge of the best treatment for emergency conditions can be gained only if consent to experimental practices is sometimes bypassed." That doesn't necessarily mean that the "research is highly likely to yield results that will benefit the patient," as answer choice (C) suggests.

Even if we did equate those two terms, the relationship established by answer choice (C) is the reversal of the assumed relationship from the argument.

The argument concludes that "some restricted nonconsensual research should be allowed."

Think about it like this. The argument looks like:

A
==
B

The assumption is A ---> B

In this case answer choice (C) is basically saying B ---> A
It's backwards! Remember "only if" introduces a necessary condition.

Does that help clear things up? Let me know if you'd still like some more help with this one...

[gyfirefire]

Can anyone help me understand (B)? I narrowed down to (B) and (E) and figured (E) is better than (B), but don't get it why (B) is wrong. After negation, it seems to me that it weakens the original argument. Negation of (B) yields: "if patients knew that ..., it could NOT adversely affect the outcome of that research", i am thinking to myself if this is true, why the patients should not given the rights of being informed of the treatment???

[sgorginian]

Great question, I struggled with answer choice B too. Here's what I thought when I read it:

"An assumption should help connect the support to the the conclusion."

Support: Knowledge of best treatment can be gained only if consent to experimental practices is bypassed in emergencies.

Conclusion: Some medical research should be allowed without consent.

[B] says "If the patient knows of the experimental treatment then that could mess up the outcome". Wait a minute....this is not helping because it says if the patient knows then the outcome would be messed up, so then why would anyone want to do this experimental treatment in the first place???

Your negation: "If patients knew that experimental treatment were being used in medical emergencies, it could NOT adversely affect the outcome". YES! This HELPS because it is basically saying "hey, if the patient does know...who cares it still will not affect the outcome, so let us go ahead and do it" So this negation is HELPING the argument, but negated assumptions should destroy the argument not help.

Hope that helped. =)

[gyfirefire]

Thanks a lot for your analysis and help! seems like after negation it can either weaken or support the original argument and i just looked at only one side.

Wondered if you mind looking at my another question 2004-06-B-18 "health education" & propaganda?

Appreciate it!

[sgorginian]

Glad it helped. I answered your other question too.

[LSAT-Chang]

Hi.. I'm still having trouble why we HAVE to assume (E).
After reading the above posts, I have some understanding as to why the remaining 4 can be eliminated, but I really can't seem to understand why (E) would be a required assumption. I feel like it is a repetition of the argument core. It feels like just another "fact", if that makes sense.

The argument core I had was:

Knowlege of the best treatment for emergency conditions can be gained only if consent to experimental practices is sometimes bypassed in medical emergencies. THEREFORE, some restricted none consensual medical reesarch should be allowed.

So basically, why do we have to assume that the "rights of patients to informed consent is outweighed in at least some medical emergencies by the possible benefits of research conducted without their consent"?

I've been solving and reviewing LSAT questions for the past 8 hours without a break, and maybe that's why I'm not really "seeing" the correct answers as correct ones..

Anyone please help!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Suppose we negate answer choice (E). Then the right of patients to informed consent would never outweigh the benefits of research conducted without their consent. That would mean that it is always more important for patients to consent to those treatments than to gain knowledge of the best medical treatments. So if we negate answer choice (E), then the conclusion would no longer be possible - thus the claim that was negated was necessary to the argument.

To find necessary assumptions we often negate the answer choice to see if it destroys the conclusion. If it was really necessary, then without it the conclusion does not follow. For instance to determine whether breathing is necessary for humans to survive, ask yourself, "what would happen if humans stopped breathing?" Well, they'd die. So breathing was in fact necessary to humans surviving.

The argument basically says, that generally speaking you shouldn't conduct treatments on patients without their consent. But there is this benefit to conducting treatments on patients without their consent. Therefore we should allow conducting treatments on patients in some circumstances.

This argument assumes that those benefits that we gain are more important than the right of those patients to consent to treatments before they are performed. What happens if the right of those patients is more important than gaining knowledge on the best medical treatments? Then we'd never want to allow for some treatments of patients without their consent. And nowhere in the argument do they tell us what is more important, so it's an assumption of the argument - and NOT an explicitly stated premise.

Does that make sense?

[LSAT-Chang]

Suppose we negate answer choice (E). Then the right of patients to informed consent would never outweigh the benefits of research conducted without their consent. That would mean that it is always more important for patients to consent to those treatments than to gain knowledge of the best medical treatments. So if we negate answer choice (E), then the conclusion would no longer be possible - thus the claim that was negated was necessary to the argument.

To find necessary assumptions we often negate the answer choice to see if it destroys the conclusion. If it was really necessary, then without it the conclusion does not follow. For instance to determine whether breathing is necessary for humans to survive, ask yourself, "what would happen if humans stopped breathing?" Well, they'd die. So breathing was in fact necessary to humans surviving.

The argument basically says, that generally speaking you shouldn't conduct treatments on patients without their consent. But there is this benefit to conducting treatments on patients without their consent. Therefore we should allow conducting treatments on patients in some circumstances.

This argument assumes that those benefits that we gain are more important than the right of those patients to consent to treatments before they are performed. What happens if the right of those patients is more important than gaining knowledge on the best medical treatments? Then we'd never want to allow for some treatments of patients without their consent. And nowhere in the argument do they tell us what is more important, so it's an assumption of the argument - and NOT an explicitly stated premise.

Does that make sense?

Yes!! Now it makes perfect sense. I guess I'm not yet "used" to negating the assumptions (as I've only had 2 classes so far). I think it's harder to "figure out" what the "assumption" is (i.e. that those benefits we gain are more important than the right of those patients to consent to treatments before they are performed) but SO much easier to just see it when we "negate" it, just like you did above.

Do you mind helping me with my other 2 posts that I posted last Sunday? It is Preptest 45, RC, Passage 4 (Canadian aboriginal rights) Q23 and Q24. Thank you so much for your help! I really appreciate it! =)

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Looks like one of those questions has been answered and the other one has been assigned and he should get to you shortly. If not, feel free to PM me and let me know and I'll make sure that the question gets responded to...

[hanselle.c]

I am having trouble with this question in terms of even finding the arg't core. I didn't understand why E was correct b/c to me it is talking about RESEARCH, when the supporting info speaks about 'experimental practices' (not research). I also didn't choose this b.c, even though I could not see why research was relevant, I also saw this answer choice as being one that simply restated both the P and C.
I don't understand how research factors in here.
I chose D, because frankly I didn't know what to choose.
What does the arg core look like?
How does research factor in?

Thanks

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

I am having trouble with this question in terms of even finding the arg't core.

The conclusion can be identified with the language cue "so." The conclusion then is that "some restricted nonconsensual research should be allowed."

I didn't understand why E was correct b/c to me it is talking about RESEARCH, when the supporting info speaks about 'experimental practices' (not research).

The conclusion is itself about research.

The evidence for why we should allow some restricted nonconsensual research is that "knowledge of the best treatment can be gained only if consent to experimental practices is sometimes bypassed in medical emergencies.

So there's a choice between the patient's rights and the need to gain knowledge of the best treatments in medical emergencies. The conclusion suggests we should decide in favor of the latter, so it must be assumed that gaining knowledge of the best treatments is better than or more important than the patient's rights in at least some cases - best expressed in answer choice (E).

I think the biggest clue is the word "should" in the conclusion. If we are told about the rights of patients and the need of medical researchers and then told that we should decide in favor of the medical researchers, it needs to be true that something about what the medical researchers are doing is better/more important than the rights of the patients. This is a classic example of concluding something subjective from objective evidence. In such a case the argument is assuming the subjectivity implied in the conclusion.

Hope that helps!

[sujin91]

Hi. I still don't understand why answer choice C is incorrect. In one of your responses, you talked about how answer choice C is a reversal of what we want. (a >>>> b vs. b >>>a ) What do you mean by that ?

the following is what I understand thus far:

Support: if you can gain knowledge of the best treatment for emergency conditions, you should bypass the consent for experimental practices.

Conclusion: Therefore, some restricted non-consensual medical research should be allowed.

When i first read this, I thought that the gap between the support and the conclusion is the assumption that at least some restricted non consensual medical research can provide knowledge.

I chose answer choice C, which is exactly what I was looking for before I looked at the answer choices.

Answer choice E , when you negate it, i guess does kill the argument. But I don't see why C is wrong... Please explain... Thank you.

Sujin

[jvillegas]

So there's a choice between the patient's rights and the need to gain knowledge of the best treatments in medical emergencies. The conclusion suggests we should decide in favor of the latter, so it must be assumed that gaining knowledge of the best treatments is better than or more important than the patient's rights in at least some cases - best expressed in answer choice (E).

I think the biggest clue is the word "should" in the conclusion. If we are told about the rights of patients and the need of medical researchers and then told that we should decide in favor of the medical researchers, it needs to be true that something about what the medical researchers are doing is better/more important than the rights of the patients. This is a classic example of concluding something subjective from objective evidence. In such a case the argument is assuming the subjectivity implied in the conclusion.

So, if the question stem instead asked us why the reasoning in this argument is flawed, could the correct answer be that it "draws a conclusion about what should be done from premises all of which are about factual matters only"?

[rpcuhk]

So, if the question stem instead asked us why the reasoning in this argument is flawed, could the correct answer be that it "draws a conclusion about what should be done from premises all of which are about factual matters only"?

I think the flaw in this argument would be taking for granted that in some medical cases it's more important to get knowledge of best treatment than protecting patients' right to full-information.

[uhdang]

After 2 years from last post, I thought it's okay to refresh it a bit

Here is the core:

Knowledge of the best treatment for emergency conditions can be gained only if consent to experimental practices is sometimes bypassed in medical emergencies. ==> Some restricted nonconsensual medical research should be allowed.

Regarding the core, and this tends to happen more often than I wish to, I get confused to where I should draw the line between "Background Information" and "Premise." While recognizing premise indicators and such help me see which part is most likely to be the premise, in this question for example, since a patient's right is mentioned in the "Background Information" and it is also mentioned in the right Answer Choice, I can't help but thinking maybe I should have included that information into premise, too.

As I understand that the core is just to help us see the relationship and the gap, we don't need to include all the details, it's pretty tricky to draw that line of what should NOT be included.

At any rate, getting into assumption of the passage, Ethicist assumes that gaining knowledge of the best treatment for emergency condition sometimes outweigh other issues that could be raised when bypassing the consent. Answer Choice E) states "patient's right" as one of the other issues, thereby making it a necessary assumption. Negation of this would destroy the argument.

A) What is best for the patients is not what we are concerned. We are concerned about “gaining the knowledge of the best treatment for emergency conditions.” So, this is out of scope.

B) Tempting. B) and E) were the last contenders I had to fight for. My reasoning for eliminating this was that we are concerned about consent or not, not knowing or not. Even if they know that experimental treatment is being done, they could still consent to it. Bypassing the consent doesn’t necessarily mean not informing it. Even if they don’t consent it, in need of gaining best knowledge of emergency situation, they could pursue the experiment.


C) Aside from Reversing necessary condition(nonconsensual medical research should be allowed) for sufficient condition, another issue for this answer choice is that benefiting the patient, although sounds appropriate, is not stated as a focus. So, this is also not necessary, or out of scope.

D) We are not dealing with the specific case where “best treatment option is unknown.” Out of scope.

E) Incorporating the patient's right from background information, putting this answer choice in between premise and conclusion provides acceptable flow. Of course, negation of this destroys the argument: The right of patients to informed consent is outweighed in NONE of the medical emergencies by the possible benefits of research conducted without their consent.

[Mab6q]

Might I add that even if C didn't have the conditional issues, it seems to be too broad, as in the argument we are only talking about that cases that involve treatment for emergency conditions. The negation would not work.

The line of reasoning applies to D.

[mkd000]

Another reason that (C) may be wrong: I do not believe that it is relevant whether or not the research is allowed is hinged on how likely it is to have results that benefit. Maybe the conclusion's "some" is also referring to those instances where there is even only a sheer possibility of patient-benefitting results. Or maybe knowledge of the best treatment is gained when in emergency situations, a doctor uses experimental practices that terribly fail but this leads to knowledge of best treatments for future cases. Essentially, I came to conclude that (C) may strengthen the argument (Geeks - what do you think???), but that it is not a necessary assumption of the argument.

[ohthatpatrick]

The "highly likely" is DEFINITELY poisoning the answer.

This is a "WHAT ELSE might this author believe" type wrong answer choice. Or maybe WHAT NEXT?

He concludes we should sometimes do nonconsensual medical research.

So WHAT NEXT?
When should we do it? To whom? With what goal?

He might plausibly say, "Let's only do it if we're really optimistic that the research will benefit the patient"

But discussing HOW we'll do it goes beyond the current debate. The conclusion vs. anti-conclusion is the debate of "Should we NEVER allow nonconsensual research or should we SOMETIMES allow it?"