#18 - An article claims that many medical patients have

[ladybug8712]

So I thought it was D because if you negate it you get:
Babies are more likely to be born during full moon night than non full moon night. Thereby proving the argument which was “disproven”

I initially chose answer D too, i get where you were coming from, and I am not an LSAT expert or tutor, but i would say that D is incorrect because it is not as assumption. The argument already states that answer D is true by claiming this as an 'empirically disproven report', so it is not something that we are required to assume in order for the argument to make sense. it was already explicitly stated.

[James Finch]

Hi Lady Bug and Lane,

This one is tough because of the analogical reasoning being used in the stimulus, and how rare it is to see that from a premise in an assumption question (or any LR question for that matter). So it's helpful to know beforehand that in order to have an analogy actually support a claim, the two situations need to actually be analogous. This means that that all parts of the analogical premise need to match up with the concomitant parts to whatever situation the conclusion is concerned with.

Here, the big missing piece is the observer aspect, in that we don't know who is observing the medical patients or anything about them, while the analogy is concerned with the faulty memories of nurses observing childbirths. This is very difficult to Prephrase, but that's the missing piece to the analogy. (B) gives us this, matching up the analogy to the situation that the conclusion is about.

(D) isn't actually something stated in the stimulus, but it also doesn't matter to it; the analogy is about whether more babies are born during full moons, not whether fewer babies are born. Their could be the same number (which is what is the implication I took away). So there doesn't need to be fewer babies born during full moons, just that there aren't more.

Hope this clears things up!

[lanereuden]

Regarding D,
isn't it actually the case, now that I think of it, that we'd want D to say the opposite of what it currently says and in that event, would be correct:
that is:
Babies are more likely to be born during full moon than without.
(perhaps it would be make it correct per se, but it would certainly be consistent with what we would expect given the stimulus)

[VamosRafa19]

if E read "the idea that medical patients have an instinctual ability to predict sudden changes in their medical IS a widely held belief" would that work? I'm reading the baby being born in full moon works because it's a widely held belief and therefore staff are more likely to remember it? I guess even then B would be better answer choice. Maybe it would just strengthen?

[Robert Carroll]

Vamos,

I think your adjustment just strengthens the argument, and is not an assumption necessary for it. I say that because we need the belief to be held by enough people to influence their expectations, but I don't think we need it held "widely", whatever that means. If the answer had said something like "The idea that medical patients have an instinctual ability to predict sudden changes in their medical status is believed by enough people to influence some people's expectations," maybe that would be better.

As I think you can see, answer choice (E) itself is bad because its opposite might, arguably, strengthen the argument - if its opposite is good for the argument, it itself is probably very bad for the argument!

Robert Carroll

[powerscoreQasker]

Hi, I have a question about #18. I got it right initially because I could see where the argument was going, but I'm struggling to understand something fundamental about the stimulus or about answer choice B.

I get that the stimulus' author is arguing that there is confirmation bias being exhibited by whoever is reporting the medical patients' supposed clairvoyance. To me, B only works if we assume that the people reporting the medical patients' supposed clairvoyance are the medical staff, rather than the patients themselves. If we do not assume that the medical staff are the ones reporting it, then B is not a necessary assumption, since it could be the patients themselves exhibiting confirmation bias.

If we negate B, we get "patients' predictions of sudden changes in their medical status are just as or more likely to be remembered by medical staff if no such change actually occurs." But if the article isn't basing its claim off of medical staff's anecdata, but rather patients' reports, then negating B does nothing to the argument.

Reading these posts and thinking through it again, I think I found something. Maybe we should interpret the essential features of the full moon maternity ward case as including the fact that medical staff are the ones remembering things in a biased way, rather than just that someone is remembering things in a biased way. Is that it?

[Adam Tyson]

What you may be overlooking here, powerscoreQasker, is that the argument is based on an analogy, and that means the author must believe that the two cases being compared are sufficiently similar that we could take the conclusion about the analogous case (full moon birth rates) and apply it to the current case (patient predictions). If the medical staff do not exhibit that confirmation bias, then the two cases are not analogous, and thus the argument breaks down.

I think you may be looking at answer B through the lens of a sufficient assumption (aka Justify the Conclusion) rather than a necessary one. Answer B does not prove that the evidence should not be trusted, because as you say the evidence might be coming from other sources than medical staff. But it is a necessary assumption because it is an essential element of the analogy, which is the only evidence presented in support of the conclusion.

Looks like you picked up on that issue, at least tangentially, at the end there, so good work!

[powerscoreQasker]

Thanks for the reply.

If the medical staff do not exhibit that confirmation bias, then the two cases are not analogous, and thus the argument breaks down.

Right, that's the missing piece. When I read this one, I didn't initially come to the conclusion that that was an "essential element of the analogy." You're interpreting the stimulus (and rightly, I guess, or else the question wouldn't work) as indicating that the analogy includes staff reporting on the patients' predictions. I interpreted it as somebody reporting on the patients' predictions. Under the second interpretation, B is not a necessary assumption. Under the first interpretation, B is a necessary assumption. Could you explain why you see the staff reporting on the patients' predictions as an essential element of the analogy? That's what I'm struggling with. If I had to reflect on this question, I'd say that just the fact that one side of the analogy mentions medical staff makes it reasonable to infer that the other side would involve medical staff.

I'm also not sure I understand your thought that I might be looking at this as a sufficient assumption question. It seems to me that the question of staff vs. somebody reporting patients' predictions being implied by the analogy is a crucial one, though evidently one that many managed to answer without much difficulty! B certainly doesn't prove the stimulus' conclusion, but B would be necessary on one interpretation of the "who" question.

[Adam Tyson]

In order for the situations to be analogous, it must be that anyone who might be reporting these incidents is less likely to remember those cases where the predictions did not come true, including patients and staff. If the staff are just as likely to remember positive results as negative results then the cases would be different enough that the analogy would not hold, even if patients had some confirmation bias. Same if the patients are just as likely to report positives as negatives.

I thought you might have been considering it like a Justify question because it seemed that you disliked answer B because it did not prove the conclusion. If patients could be the ones doing the reporting for the article, then answer B might be true and still not prove the conclusion. But the answer doesn't need to prove the conclusion; the argument must prove the assumption.

[KG!]

Would Powerscore classify this as a supporter assumption question? I almost chose A, but ultimately chose B because the argument didn’t appear to be airtight whereas a question that would need a defender assumption would be. When the author concluded that the article should not be trusted, they had no proof essentially. On the other hand, within the analogy there’s two parts to it if that makes sense.

I need to get better with my explanations, but a visual version would be:

Article Claims.. + ??? = can’t be trusted
Reports on babies + the impact of this rumor = can’t be trusted.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance!!!