Q22 - In marketing their products, drug companies often send

[smiller]

Question Type:
Inference

Stimulus Breakdown:
The survey results tell us two things:
1. most physicians believe that their own choices are not influenced by the gifts;
2. most physicians believe that most other physicians' choices are influenced by gifts.

Answer Anticipation:
It's tempting to think that both of these statements are about the exact same group of physicians, but that isn't necessarily true. These are two separate statements, so there could be some physicians who believe one thing, but not the other.

However, we do have three “mosts” to keep track of here. First, most physicians believe that they themselves aren’t influenced by gifts. Second, most physicians believe that others are influenced. Even further, this last group believes that “most” other physicians are influenced. If you already see a problem with this many mosts, that's magnificent!

Correct Answer:
(C)

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) There are a few problems with this answer choice. Physicians who believe they aren't influenced by gifts might still accept them. We can't infer that anything in the stimulus is about physicians who don't accept gifts.

Choice (A) also contains a significant detail creep: even if the gifts do influence physicians to prescribe certain drugs instead of others, this doesn't mean that any drugs they prescribe are "unnecessary."

(B) Out of scope. We only know what physicians believe about being influenced or not being influenced. We don't know if they think this needs to be regulated, and we definitely don't know if they believe that drug companies need new guidelines. That's completely out of scope.

(C) This is correct. If you're having trouble seeing why, let's plug in some numbers.

Suppose that we have group of five doctors. If, according to the survey, most believe that their own choices are not influenced by gifts, then at least three out of five believe this. Let's call them N's.

N N N x x

If the majority believe that most other physicians are influenced by gifts, this group must also include at least three out of the five. We'll call this group the O's.

x x O O O

It's not necessary for both groups to contain exactly the same members, but there has to be some overlap. We must have at least one doctor who is both an N and an O, meaning she believes both things. We'll call her Dr. NO.

So let's pull Dr. NO out of the group. What remains are two N's, who believe that they are not influenced, and two O's, who believe that most others are influenced.

N N O O

Dr. NO believes that most of these people—at least three out of four—are influenced by gifts. But at least two of them—the Ns—believe that they are not influenced. So, someone has to be mistaken: either one of the N's is mistaken about his own choices not being influenced, or Dr. NO is mistaken about one of the N's being influenced.

We run into this same problem if we substitute any of the O's in place of Dr. NO. Either the O must be mistaken, or at least one N must be mistaken.

(D) Out of scope. We haven't been told anything about physicians who admit that their own choices are influenced by gifts.

(E) Out of scope. We haven't been told anything about physicians who admit that their own choices are influenced by gifts.

Takeaway/Pattern: If you don't immediately understand the contradiction in the stimulus, it's hard to see why (C) is correct. Hopefully this explanation for choice (C) helps, but it's not the kind of thing you'd have time to work through on your own, under time pressure, on an actual LSAT! However, note that we can arrive at the correct answer by eliminating the other four.

#officialexplanation

[T.J.]

Glad to be the first one to post on this question. Here is how my thinking goes:

The stimulus tells us that in a recent survey the belief of some doctors is contradicted by their peers in terms of whether their choices of prescribing drugs are influenced by the gifts from drug companies. I got this information from the two "most". Each most describes a polarizing situation and for the intersection of the two "most", only one situation is possible.

A. "do not accept gift"...huh... do we know anything about those docs? The study seems to focus on those who have received gifts. If it wants to tell the impact of these gifts on doctors, its subjects have to be those gift receivers. If a doctor has not received gift yet, how can one say whether the doc is influenced or not.

B. "Should adopt new guideline" is not a legit inference. Ok, just because most doctors believe their peers are influenced by gifts, it doesn't mean they believe the drug companies "should adopt new guideline".

C sounds very conservative (which I like), and matches my expectation at the beginning.

D and E have the same sort of problems. We don't know anything about the "Physicians who admit that...". Love it when the Lsac applies the same technique to making up more than one wrong answer choices.

Let me know what you guys think.

[christine.defenbaugh]

Killer breakdown T.J.!

And while it's generally not a great idea to stress yourself over trying too hard to predict and answer on an inference question (since they could target all manner of things), the inherent contradiction between:

1) most doctors believe they are unbiased and
2) most doctors believe most other doctors are biased

should set off some immediate alarm bells! Somebody's gotta be wrong about something! (C) mirrors this concern.

Just a few thoughts to add to your excellent analysis:
(A) Not only does this discuss a subgroup we don't know about, it also make a comparison we can't back up. We don't know whether any group is more or less likely to prescribe unnecessary drugs.

Similarly, in (D) and (E), you're again right that we know nothing about physicians who admit their bias! But even if (D) discussed a legit group, we don't know that any group is influenced "to a greater degree" than any other group.

And lastly, the words "most" and "all" in (B) and (E) respectively should be considered suspect at first glance. The stimulus had a handful of 'most' statements, so it would be very difficult to support a valid inference with a 'most' or an 'all'.

Keep up the great work T.J.!

[aradunakhor]

Would C be true if the second premise were changed, so that we had:

1) most doctors believe they are unbiased and
2) exactly 1 doctor believes most other doctors are biased

When taking this PT I wasted some time thinking through this since I didn't expect that C could be proven true with a much weaker second premise.

[daijob]

Can "most" mean "all"? I thought since it says most, there are some people who are not talked about in "most" category.

[smiller]

Can "most" mean "all"? I thought since it says most, there are some people who are not talked about in "most" category.

"Most" on the LSAT means more than half. To be specific, it means an unknown quantity greater than 50%. Most can include all. It doesn't, by definition, have to be less than all.