Q18 - An article claims that many medical patients have an..

[tombradyisgod]

This one was tough. I can kind of see how B is the answer, but it seems weak to me?

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type: Necessary Assumption

Argument Core:
conclusion
We shouldn't believe that many patients predict sudden changes in their medical status.

evidence
The evidence is anecdotal.
Plus, it's like when we thought that more babies were born on nights with full moons. Once we empirically measured it, we found out it was wrong. But while the rumor was popular, maternity ward staff were more likely to remember busy full moon nights than other nights.

Analysis of Core

When authors use comparisons or analogies to make their argument, we have to ask whether the things being compared are "relevantly similar" or "meaningfully different".

WIth Strengthen / Weaken, you get answers providing more sameness to Strengthen or answers pointing out important distinctions to Weaken.

With Necessary Assumption, sometimes LSAT just forces us to Complete the Analogy.

for example:
Some people think dogs know when their owner is about to go on vacation. But this claim derives from projecting thoughts onto dogs and should not be trusted. This case is analogous to thinking that babies know when their parents are about to go on vacation.

What needs to be assumed to complete the analogy?

(A) Babies DO NOT know when their parents are about to go on vacation.

Do you see how if we negated (A), it would be a completely inappropriate analogy to draw in relation to dogs?

For Q18, if the case of full moon maternity wards is similar to the case of patients predicting sudden changes in their status, then two things should be true:
1. There really ISN'T a special correlation happening
2. The perceptual illusion of THINKING there's some special phenomenon going on is really just a symptom of certain events being more memorable than others

The author has already established #1 (it's his conclusion). But he never established #2.

(A) The author's conclusion could be correct, even if no one ever empirically proves him right. The author's logic isn't resting on THAT PART of the full moon analogy holding in the case of medical patients.

(B) is the correct answer, and it just completes the analogy. If we negated (B), then the author's long-winded analogy would suddenly be completely irrelevant to the case of medical patients.

(C) The author never questions the sincerity of the medical patients, so it makes no difference whether they were or weren't being serious.

(D) This is closer to the opposite of what the author is saying. He's saying, "There are NOT these magical connections people think they see. It's just a symptom of having stronger memories for certain events. A full moon night is just like any other night."

(E) "widely held belief" is out of scope and wouldn't effect the logic of the argument.

Hope this helps.

[tombradyisgod]

Thank you! Helped a ton!

[783874728]

Question Type: Necessary Assumption

Argument Core:
conclusion
We shouldn't believe that many patients predict sudden changes in their medical status.

evidence
The evidence is anecdotal.
Plus, it's like when we thought that more babies were born on nights with full moons. Once we empirically measured it, we found out it was wrong. But while the rumor was popular, maternity ward staff were more likely to remember busy full moon nights than other nights.

Analysis of Core

When authors use comparisons or analogies to make their argument, we have to ask whether the things being compared are "relevantly similar" or "meaningfully different".

WIth Strengthen / Weaken, you get answers providing more sameness to Strengthen or answers pointing out important distinctions to Weaken.

With Necessary Assumption, sometimes LSAT just forces us to Complete the Analogy.

for example:
Some people think dogs know when their owner is about to go on vacation. But this claim derives from projecting thoughts onto dogs and should not be trusted. This case is analogous to thinking that babies know when their parents are about to go on vacation.

What needs to be assumed to complete the analogy?

(A) Babies DO NOT know when their parents are about to go on vacation.

Do you see how if we negated (A), it would be a completely inappropriate analogy to draw in relation to dogs?

For Q18, if the case of full moon maternity wards is similar to the case of patients predicting sudden changes in their status, then two things should be true:
1. There really ISN'T a special correlation happening
2. The perceptual illusion of THINKING there's some special phenomenon going on is really just a symptom of certain events being more memorable than others

The author has already established #1 (it's his conclusion). But he never established #2.

(A) The author's conclusion could be correct, even if no one ever empirically proves him right. The author's logic isn't resting on THAT PART of the full moon analogy holding in the case of medical patients.

(B) is the correct answer, and it just completes the analogy. If we negated (B), then the author's long-winded analogy would suddenly be completely irrelevant to the case of medical patients.

(C) The author never questions the sincerity of the medical patients, so it makes no difference whether they were or weren't being serious.

(D) This is closer to the opposite of what the author is saying. He's saying, "There are NOT these magical connections people think they see. It's just a symptom of having stronger memories for certain events. A full moon night is just like any other night."

(E) "widely held belief" is out of scope and wouldn't effect the logic of the argument.

Hope this helps.

So if D is "babies are no more less likely to be born during a night with a full moon than during a night without a full moon", would that be a good answer?

[skullastic]

Thanks to your posts, I understand why (B) is the correct answer here. However, I do have a problem with Patrick's explanation of (E). In the stimulus, the author says that maternity room staff had biased memory 'ONCE THAT RUMOR BECAME POPULAR'. I take it that busy full moon nights were not more likely to be remembered until then. If so, wouldn't (E) be wrong because of 'not' in the sentence and NOT because it is out of scope? Thanks.

[syp]

I got this question correct but I wanted to know how do you negate "less likely" ? Thanks!

[ohthatpatrick]

Any time you're negating "more" or "less" you're basically stuck with whether you wanna be logically precise or kind to your brain.

How would we negate this?
"Getting hit by lightning is more likely than being the victim of a terrorist attack"

LOGICALLY PRECISE NEGATION
"Getting hit by lightning is equally or less likely than being the victim of a terrorist attack"

But, for 99.9% of negating cases, you might as well "cheat" and just flip your brain over to the other side and say "Getting hit by lightning is less likely than being the victim of a terrorist attack"