Q18 - Some potential anticancer drugs work by

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
Inference (Most Strongly Supported)

Stimulus Breakdown:
No argument, so we just need the facts. Some anticancer drugs deprive tumors of needed blood vessels. The drugs work by inhibiting the creation of blood vessels (angiogenises). The same drugs prevent obesity in rodents.

Answer Anticipation:
Well, if the drugs inhibit the creation of blood vessels and they also prevent obesity, that suggests a link between obesity and the number of blood vessels.

Correct answer:
C

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Ranking! That's a big red flag in Most Strongly Supported questions. They almost never actually support that kind of comparison, and this is no exception.

(B) Hmm…lab rats are a decent proxy for humans in the real world. But can we really extrapolate this data from rats onto humans on the LSAT? I doubt it. "Probably" is too extreme a degree for that kind of extrapolation. What's more, the drugs prevent obesity in rats. But do they cure it? We don't know. So surmising that it would cause weight-loss is simply unsupported.

(C) This sounds better. "Depends" is pretty strong language, though, so we should be careful here and ensure that none of the remaining answers with weaker degrees have more powerful support.

(D) Unsupported. We don't have any info about rodents with cancer. Plus, more ranking! Eliminate!

(E) Unsupported. We don't have any info about vital nutrients. So, C it is!

Takeaway/Pattern:
Beware Most Strongly Supported answers that deal with ranking. Those types of relationships are almost never supported by the stimulus. And if an answer has a degree that you worry is too extreme, defer until you check the remaining choices. Some Most Strongly Supported correct answers will have a pretty extreme degree. As long as it's the best supported answer among the choices, it will be correct!

#officialexplanation

[Wenjin]

I still cannot wrap up my head over why C is better than B.

I understand that B is wrong because the extrapolation from animal to human beings, but isn’t it true that this has been the case how scientists been doing to make inferences from animal experiments to study possible solutions for human beings? I thought this is a common sense...

C is a bit strong and I don’t know how to prove it: could it just be that the drug does something on fat cells that has no relationship with blood vessels?

Did I miss something here?