#25 - Therapist: In a recent study, researchers measured how

[LSATStudent2023]

Hi Team Powerscore,

I was wondering how to best explain the difference between Answer Choice (E) and Answer Choice (B) and how Answer Choice (B) is a better answer.

If I understand this correctly, would Answer Choice (B) be correct because the LSAT author assumes that "most people" refers to the general population and have at least one of the 60 problems, but this assumption could be wrong if most people don't have at least one of these 60 problems. Also, does "most people" refer to the group studied or the general population? And that (E) is incorrect because the number of problems for the group on average vs. the average of the population as a whole doesn't address the flaw of not knowing if most people in the population have at least one of these problems.

Thank you for any help you can provide!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi LSATStudent2023,

The flaw is a bit different than your description here, and the answer choice (B) describes something a bit different too.
We know that the folks in the study had 60 different psychological difficulties and 45 of the 60 were resolved with 50 weekly therapy sessions. The author concludes that most people can recover after 50 weekly sessions. What's the difference between the evidence and the conclusion? The evidence is about most psychological conditions, and the conclusion jumps to most people. We know nothing about the frequency of the 60 conditions in the study.

We can imagine two possible scenarios, both equally consistent with the stimulus. First, we can imagine that each of the 60 conditions was equally common. If that's true, then 75% of the conditions being resolvable after 50 weekly sessions would mean that most people would find their symptoms resolve within those 50 sessions. We could also imagine that the conditions have vastly different frequencies. What if the 45 that resolve within the 50 sessions only represent the conditions of 20% of the people in the study? 80% would have non-resolving conditions, and the conclusion would no longer follow. THIS is what answer choice (B) describes. Because we don't know the frequency that the conditions that occurred in the study, we can't draw a conclusion about the likelihood of people having conditions resolve.

Answer choice (E) is describing something that didn't occur. It didn't take for granted that the people in the study were the same as the general population. It gave evidence of that by stating that the study contained a large diverse population. That suggests (not proves, but suggests) that the evidence from the study could apply to people as a whole.

Hope that helps!