Q9 - Physician: In comparing our country

[nanagyanewa]

Can someone please help me with Q9? I really don't understand why D is the right answer. Is it because the stimulus says all the countries have roughly the same population size? Thanks

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Not exactly. Although that helps, and definitely contributes to the argument's conclusion.

A more general way of looking the situation is to see that there are a multitude of factors that would influence the frequency of prescriptions for ulcer medicines. First is the frequency of ulcers in people in the respective countries. Another is the means for accessing the medicines: number of doctors, access to health care, cost of prescriptions, wealth of individuals, etc. Furthermore, cultural attitudes might influence people's attitudes about medicine in general or ulcer medicines in particular.

All of those factors could play a role. The argument concludes that one of those factors is the primary reason; the frequency of ulcers in the population. To support this, rule out a competing explanation. Answer choice (D) does this perfectly.

Does that clear this one up?

[chike_eze]

I chose (E) because I figured the author was assuming that the mechanism to report number of prescriptions was the same in all three countries. What if the reason for fewer reports in the physician's country was due to a mediocre reporting system when compared with the other two countries?

I thought (E) helped the argument because it made it more likely that reporting in the physician's country was equal if not better than the other two countries. Therefore, the argument would be less vulnerable to an attack that the physician's country may have a poorer reporting system than the other 2 countries.

Is this one of those cases where we have to accept the evidence the physician puts forth as fact? As opposed to a claim which can be strengthened/weakened by further evidence?

Or is there something else at play that I missed?

Please straighten me out here. Thanks!

[daniel.g.winter]

I chose (E) because I figured the author was assuming that the mechanism to report number of prescriptions was the same in all three countries. What if the reason for fewer reports in the physician's country was due to a mediocre reporting system when compared with the other two countries?

I thought (E) helped the argument because it made it more likely that reporting in the physician's country was equal if not better than the other two countries. Therefore, the argument would be less vulnerable to an attack that the physician's country may have a poorer reporting system than the other 2 countries.

Is this one of those cases where we have to accept the evidence the physician puts forth as fact? As opposed to a claim which can be strengthened/weakened by further evidence?

Or is there something else at play that I missed?

Please straighten me out here. Thanks!

I had D and E as contenders for this. I eliminated E because think of the flipside of what you said - let's say the physician's country has a "MUCH BETTER" system for reporting the number of prescriptions. Then that means the system in the other two countries is not only worse, it's MUCH worse. That means the reports of prescriptions in that country are not reliable at all. The true numbers could be even LESS than the physician's country, and that would not help his argument at all. In fact, it would weaken it and possibly show there are more ulcer cases in his country than in the other two countries. That's how I saw it, and therefore D is the only good answer. Let me know if that makes sense.

[jai.023]

Can someone explain why A is wrong? If the rate is not the same wouldn't that ruin the author's conclusion? Hence assuming it is the same strengthens it?

Thanks,

[GeneW]

I see why D is correct. Can one of the LSAT expert help with explaining why E is incorrect?

Is it wrong because a much better reporting system in the physician's country would mean the numbers are inaccurate?

[christine.defenbaugh]

Lots of great questions being raised here! Let's break this one down from the top.

Dealing with a strengthen question, first stop: argument core!

PREMISE: three countries (same population size)
all three face same ulcer-causes
we have fewer prescriptions than the other two (in all socioeconomic groups
CONCLUSION: we have fewer ulcers than the other two

Wait...this argument just make a giant term shift - prescriptions for ulcers and actual ulcers are two totally different things. What if all our people are super stoic, and so have ulcers, but no prescriptions? Or what if people in the other country get prescriptions for giggles, even without ulcers? If those things were true, it would royally screw up this argument.

In essence, this argument is assuming that the number of prescriptions correlates to the number of actual ulcers (i.e., fewer prescriptions = fewer ulcers).

(D) bolsters this handily. If our people-with-ulcers are "just as likely" to get a prescription, that makes it a bit more likely that # of ulcers = # of prescriptions.

Note that the idea of 'same population size' and 'same ulcer-causes' and 'all socioeconomic strata' are simply meant to shield the argument from criticisms on those grounds. For instance, if the population sizes of the countries were wildly different from one another, this argument would have another significant flaw.


Now, let's tackle the wrong answers:
(A) This might be interesting if we knew something about how the number of prescriptions compared between the two other countries - but we don't. So the comparison of the ulcer rates between those two countries doesn't really tell us anything. This is a comparison trap - we're interested in how OUR country compares to THE OTHER countries, not how the other countries compare to one another.

(B) Weakener! If our people are super stoic, they are going to suffer through their ulcers without getting prescriptions. As a result, our 'prescription rate' might look blissfully low, but our 'ulcer rate' could be painfully high.

(C) We don't care about other countries outside of these three. And if we did include this information, it's just more info that has the same flavor as the premise - now even more countries have higher prescription rates. That doesn't bolster any assumption.

(E) This is super tempting. We're likely to read this as saying that our country isn't underreporting prescriptions. And if this answer choice had simply said something like "The physician's country is unlikely to fail to report a prescription for ulcers", it would totally help the argument. Similarly, if it had said "The physician's country is less likely to underreport prescriptions for ulcers than the other countries are", that would also help the argument - it would suggest that the other countries prescription rates are actually even higher than we thought.

But the answer choice does not actually focus on the idea of not underreporting. It focuses on accuracy as a general matter. Saying that our country's reporting is more accurate than the other countries might just as easily mean that we are less likely to overreport. If that were the case, then it becomes more likely that the other countries apparent prescription rates are inflated, which would WEAKEN the argument!

So, if this answer choice were true, the other countries' prescription rates are less accurate - but which direction? No way to know.

Keep your radar sharply tuned for answers like this that tempt you to paraphrase them to say something they don't actually say!

I hope this helps clear some things up!

[sgill5400]

Can we say answer choice (E) is incorrect because whether or not the physician's country has a better system for reporting does not alone strengthen the argument. Just because one system is 'better' does not mean it is more accurate nor does it make the other one inaccurate. It might be that the country's prescription reporting is done faster and more efficiently, but at the end of the day both might be equally accurate.

In other words, we would have to assume answer choice (E) means that the physician's reporting system is more accurate (and so it eliminates the possibility of faulty reporting in the physician's country) hence strengthening the argument?

Maybe an expert can weigh in on this.