#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!

[sxzhao]

I didn't not understand why A wasn't correct. Here's my reasoning:

My understanding of the conclusion: look, 50 weeks is all most people need

It's important to note that we are given no information whether these studied 60 problems are all that concern MOST people; it's possible that the studied 60 is only a small fraction of all problems. We do know that only 75% of the 60 problems support the conclusion above.

In other words, given the evidence is only based on 75% of 60 studied problems out of all problems on earth. So, this conclusion is poorly supported in that it (1) ignores the remaining 25% of the problems studied, and (2) ignores all problems other than the studied 60.

Therefore, choice (A) and (B) are equivalently wrong to me. I fail to comprehend why B is the answer but A isn't. Please help

[Adam Tyson]

When an author takes something for granted, that means they assume that it must be true. While it would certainly hurt the argument if most people suffered from some other problem that the ones studied, the author doesn't absolutely have to believe that there is no such additional problem. This author could easily say "sure, there are some other problems that we didn't study, and those problems take a lot longer, but most people don't have those problems." So, they don't take for granted that no such problems exist, but only that most people don't have those other problems. Answer A would only work if it included something about most people not having one of those other problems.

The problem with the argument is that the author moves from evidence about most of the problems to a conclusion about most of the people. This fails to consider the possibility that most of the people might suffer from one or more of the 25% of problems that take longer than 50 weeks to clear up. What if almost everyone has one of those problems? That would ruin the argument, because then there would be no reason to believe that 50 weeks is enough for most people, even though it is enough time for most of the problems.

[sxzhao]

Ah yes indeed! I missed the jump from STUDIES to PEOPLE. thank you for clarifying!