Q22 - Insurers and doctors are well aware

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Office furniture and equipment are not properly designed to promote workers' health. Premise: Low back injuries are more common among office workers who sit a lot than among folks who do physical labor.

Answer Anticipation:
This conclusion is causal: it attributes the difference in incidence of back injuries to the office equipment and furniture. Since this is a Weaken question, we should be thinking "could it be something else?" Maybe no matter how well-designed the furniture and equipment is, sitting all day makes you prone to back injury. Or perhaps they have the causality backwards: maybe office workers choose that kind of work over physical labor because they already have bad backs.

Correct answer:
E

Answer choice analysis:
(A) This answer supports the argument by ruling out a relevant difference (amount of time spent sitting on home furniture rather than office furniture) that could be an alternate cause for back injury.

(B) Who cares? This doesn't address the comparison or the causality.

(C) If this is true, it might seem to explain a low incidence of back injury in physical labor jobs. But it doesn’t explicitly relate mitigating the stress to the back with a reduction in the incidence of injury. That makes this one tempting but ultimately wrong.

(D) Injuries occurring on vs. off the job is an irrelevant comparison.

(E) If this is true, it provides an alternative explanation for the low incidence of back injury among physical laborers: exercise is preventative. In so doing, it weakens the argument that the higher incidence of back injury among office workers must be because of the furniture.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Alternate causes are the most common causal weakeners, so whenever you see a causal weaken question, think "could it be something else?" This one is made more difficult by the fact that it's also comparative: the thing you're trying to weaken is an explanation of one thing being higher than another. That means you could weaken by showing another reason the higher thing could be higher or another reason the lower thing could be lower.

#officialexplanation

[AJE770]

I don't understand why E is correct. Who says the laborers are the ones doing the exercise and the office workers aren't? Don't you have to add that assumption to make this correct? I feel like C is better because of this (although I see its issue). Thanks!

[MonicaH111]

I am also not seeing how E is a better choice than C. Physical labor is not necessarily the same thing as physical exercise and we don't know that the people who sit at desks aren't exercising.

[creek1262]

This is a very late reply to some of the questions above but I got this question wrong too, I picked C.
But I think what this essentially boils down to is the degree.
Since the question stem asks us what most undermines, (C)'s "encouraged" is much weaker than (E)'s "most effective ways to prevent or recover injuries."
How can weaken further from the most effective way?

[thedramallama]

really late reply, but AC C is incorrect bc it does boil down to the use of "encourage". Just because you're encouraged to do something doesn't mean that you will do it. For example, if your mom encourages you to eat a food that you disliked, does that mean you will eat it? Chances are it's unlikely you will.

[StratosM31]

(B) Who cares? This doesn't address the comparison or the causality.


#officialexplanation[/quote]

Personally I chose (B) and I don't think it's such a bad answer choice.

The conclusion is that the equipment and furniture must be not properly designed. Therefore, a strong indicator that this can't be the case, or an indication of an alternative explanation of the statistics would challenge the reasoning.

If insurance companies don't like to pay for back pain, I think that companies will do whatever they can to prevent workers from suffering from back pain, which, from my point of view, is a strong indicator that they carefully chose equipment and furniture well designed for the prevention of back pain.

I was between (B) and (C) and eliminated (C) because of ''encouraged'' and the uncertainty regarding the reduction of the degree of stress. I had eliminated (E) because the stimulus is talking about physical work of a particular type ("known to place heavy stresses on the lower back"). "Consistent physical exercise" without elaborating on the type sounded too general to me (and also what was mentioned before, the uncertain difference between "physical work" and "physical exercise").

Could someone elaborate?

[BenH787]

Sorry for being late. I see what you're saying about answer choice B, but the reason you cannot safely choose B is because you are making too many assumptions to justify it

"If insurance companies don't like to pay for back pain, I think that companies will do whatever they can to prevent workers from suffering from back pain, which, from my point of view, is a strong indicator that they carefully chose equipment and furniture well designed for the prevention of back pain."

Here you have two assumptions: 1) That because of this, companies will do whatever to prevent the back pain, and 2) this makes it so that they carefully choose equipment that's safe

Your reasoning makes perfect sense to anyone, and i think we would all agree with it-- or at least nobody would reject it outright. What is unfortunate, however, is that on the LSAT you aren't really allowed to safely assume those two things because neither is a commonsense assumption.

Answer choice E, by comparison, weakens the reasoning while also not needing any additional assumptions beyond the text.

[ChentuoZ870]

Same question regarding physical work and physical exercise.
I've checked discussions on other places regarding Q22, the discussion unanimously falls on the "exercise" and "work".
In my opinion, merely providing a fact regarding "physical exercise"(E) is no more persuasive than providing a fact regarding recommendations about stree reduction techniques(C) in this context.

If "exercise" is replaced with "usage", then (E) would be the perfect answer.

And I believe most people agree this is a awful LR question because of its wording.