Q13 - Columnist: Banning performance enhancing drugs

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: PEDs should be allowed, but only under doctor's supervision.
Evidence: Banning PEDs won't stop athletes from using them, and taking them in safe doses under a doctor's supervision makes the health risks disappear.

Answer Anticipation:
We might start out by just acknowledging that the author is assuming we SHOULD do something about the PED issue. If we left it as is, top athletes would continue to take PED's because of the big competitive advantage. There are apparently health risks in that scenario, but who said we SHOULD take steps to minimize health risks to our top athletes?

If we go further in the thinking, we could ask ourselves what's being assumed about this solution actually helping / working. The author seems to think that we'd get a better overall health result from allowing PEDs under medical supervision, but maybe we're failing to consider that top athletes would then resort to something else (possibly even more harmful) to get themselves that big competitive advantage.

Finally, the author has only considered "health risks" as a possible reason to ban PED's, and she is suggesting that once we get rid of this health risk, we should use PED's. What if there is some OTHER reason why we shouldn't use PED's, even if we were to get rid of the health risk concern?

Correct Answer:
E

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Maybe, but I think "losing respect" is too out of scope. If we negate this, it says that "spectators WOULD lose respect for athletes who take PEDs". That does sound like some other reason, beyond health risk, is a reason why we should continue to ban PEDs, but only if we add our own assumption that "we shouldn't allow anything that would cause spectators to lose respect for athletes".

(B) Maybe? If we negate this, it says that "PEDs would improve some athletes more than others". So even if we got rid of the health risk, PEDs would still be questionable for giving some athletes a bigger advantage than others. In order to weaken the argument, we'd be adding an assumption that "we shouldn't allow anything that would cause some athletes to gain a bigger advantage than others". I wouldn't think LSAT would ask us to plug in that idea to make an answer work.

(C) This brings up an out of scope scenario in which an athlete is using PEDs inappropriately, in the sense that the PED will not really help them. The author isn't talking about that, and if an athlete were taking PEDs in a way that didn't end up helping them, it wouldn't give us any reason to ban PEDs

(D) This sounds too extreme to me. Does the author have to assume that ZERO atheletes can currently find a doctor willing to prescribe a PED? No. The author isn't saying anything that sounds like that. The author would allow PEDs as long as ALL people were taking them under doctor's supervision. It could be that currently some athletes, but not all, are taking PEDs under a doctor's supervision.

(E) YES. I don't like this answer, but I would begrudgingly pick it. Unlike (A) and (B), it's not pulling in new ideas like "losing respect" or "variable results". Instead, it's re-using the term "big competitive advantage", which was identified in the argument as something that top athletes will do "whatever it takes" to attain. So when we negate this and learn that PEDs at unsafe levels would have a "big competitive advantage" over PEDs at safe levels, you can hear the objection of someone saying, "If we allowed PEDs under the idea that a doctor would administer a safe dose, these top athletes would do whatever it takes to get an unsafe dose, since they want the big competitive advantage."

Takeaway/Pattern: This problem irks me in the sense that the objection we get from negating (E) is sort of denying the author the possibility of what he's proposing. He's saying, "If everyone was taking PEDs at safe doses under a doctor's care, then we should allow them." I'd be expecting an objection that has the form "even if everyone's taking them at safe doses under a doctor's care, we still shouldn't allow them." Instead, we're getting an objection that's more like, "C'mon .... you KNOW not everyone is gonna take it at safe doses under a doctor's care." I had to really think flexibly here to come around to (E), and I had to trust that "lose respect" and "some benefit more than others" in (A) and (B) were not direct enough objections to what was said.

#officialexplanation

[RuonanW40]

I think if we translate A into "Reducing Health risks is the only issue need to be considered for the allowance of using PEDs", then it is more obvious that A is a better correct answer than E.