Q15 - The greater the number of people

[maryadkins]

15. (C)
Question Type: Principle Support
The stimulus tells us that as more people use a product, more people are exposed to the product’s risks. Since cleaning products are used by more people than medicines, it is more important to test the safety of cleaning products than to test to safety of medicines. The core could be written:

more people are exposed to risk of using cleaning products than to the risk of using meds --> more important to test for safety of cleaning products

Imagine importance as a dimmer, not an on/off switch"”which product is more important to test is the issue, not which is important and which is not. We aren’t told anything about whether testing is ever important or not. When we place the text of (C) in our core, it reads:

more people are exposed to risk of using cleaning products than to the risk of using meds -->(the more people whose health might be at risk from the regular use of a particular product, the more important it is for that product to be carefully tested to ensure its safety) --> more important to test for safety of cleaning products.

(C) strengthens the link by providing a reason it’s more important to test cleaning products.

(A) is incorrect because our conclusion is not about whether or not it is important to test a product, but about comparable importance between two different products"”which is more important and why. This is a tempting answer, so you may have kept it on the first pass.
(B) is incorrect. Like (A), (B) is tempting because it does align with the argument: lots of people using a product should mean testing! But remember, the argument is about the degree of importance.
(D) is incorrect because we aren’t comparing medicines to medicines. Our conclusion is about cleaning products versus medicines.
(E) is incorrect because while it provides an exception to a general rule that would be the opposite of what we want, that doesn’t actually strengthen the argument in the stimulus. (E) is saying that if cleaning products are more dangerous then it’s not more important for medicines to be tested is different from saying that it is more important for cleaning products to be tested"”maybe they are equally important? Plus, remember the argument that we want to strengthen: that the importance of testing goes up with the frequency of use.

[celene0007]

So the reason why E is wrong is because of its conditional statement?

[maryadkins]

I wouldn't go that far. A conditional statement can still be a right answer choice, even here. For example, (C) could have been stated:

If more people's health is at risk because of their regularly using a product, then it's more important for that product to be carefully tested.

(E) just gives us a situation where maybe it's okay not to test medicines over nonmedical products. Giving us an allowance to maybe make the argument work doesn't strengthen the argument.

Hope this clarifies!

[aznriceboi17]

Hi, I'm still unsure about the proper interpretation of certain sentences. This actually made me revisit an earlier problem: PrepTest 35 LR Section 4 Q23, which included the statement 'The higher the altitude, the thinner the air.' (link to discussion)

There was a good discussion there about statements such as the one quoted above (what I call global statements), which allows for comparison between different objects, i.e. if City A is located at a higher altitude than City B, then City A as thinner air than City B.

This is different from a statement such as 'The older one is the wiser one gets', which doesn't necessarily allow you to conclude that since Person C is older than Person D, C is wiser than D, since the inequality described only applied to the same person at different ages. The problem with these local statements is that different people have different bases. The wisdom level of Person C as a baby could be so much lower than the wisdom level of Person D as a baby, that even if C is older than D, the wisdom accumulated over those years may not have been enough to overcome that initial deficit.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sorry for that long introduction, but it made me pause on this problem, because in the stimulus we are told that more people use household maintenance products (HMP) than prescription medicines (PM). What (C) says is that the more people whose health might be at risk due to a product, the more important it is to test it. This is a local statement, however we're asked to strengthen a claim comparing two different objects, which a local statement can't do.

(C) seems analogous to arguing that since 'The older one is the wiser one gets', and Person C is older than Person D, then Person C is wiser than D (an answer choice that was marked as wrong by the LSAT in the linked question).

Can someone explain why this reasoning doesn't eliminate (C)? The only thing I could think of is that the question only asks for something that strengthens the argument, and one could argue that (C) does strengthen it a bit, in the same way that arguing that an older person is likely wiser than a kid just because people all become wiser as they become older.

[maryadkins]

I sort of follow your logic here, but it feels overly complicating.

In (C), "The more people whose health might be at risk from the regular use of a product..." supports the stimulus because we were told in the stimulus that more people use the household products than the meds, and so (C) definitely supports the conclusion that it's more important to test household products than meds: more people are being put at risk by their use of it.

[abkrusemark]

I think the LR book has a typo on the explanation to answer choice E. The first "nonmedical" should be "medical"

[roflcoptersoisoi]

Principle: The more people that are at risk due to a product the more important it is to ensure the safety of that product.

(A) Tempting because it connects two key concepts of the argument, importance for a given product to be tested and the amount of people that test it.. However it discusses the former in absolute terms whereas it is discussed in relative terms in the argument. The arguing isn't saying that ensuring safety of medicines is not important, but rather that it is less important because less people regularly use it.

(B) Same as A, discusses the importance of ensuring the safety of a product in absolute instead of comparative terms.

(C) Bingo

(D) Unlike (A) and (B) this discusses importance in relative terms but fails to discuss it in relation to the risk associated with the product as well as the number of people that regularly use said product.

(E) Irrelevant