#24 - The increasing complexity of scientific inquiry has

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must be true. The correct answer choice is (B)

Answer choice (A): The stimulus never discusses who conducts the
studies, only who authors the reports. Thus, there is no proof for this
answer choice and it fails the Fact Test. Even if you mistook “conducted”
for “reported,” the answer choice is still incorrect because the stimulus
indicates that reports involving patients from several hospitals are usually
coauthored by physicians from each hospital. Although “usually” could
mean “always,” it does not have to, and hence it is possible that a clinical
trial could be reported by physicians from just one hospital.

Answer choice (B): This answer choice is a direct paraphrase of the
second sentence. The second sentence states, “Reports of clinical
trials involving patients from several hospitals are usually coauthored
by physicians from each participating hospital.” Answer choice (B)
translates “usually” into “most,” and “coauthored by physicians from each
participating hospital” into “multiple authors.” Thus, the answer choice
passes the Fact Test and is correct.

Answer choice (C): This is a Shell Game answer choice. Although the
stimulus says there has been a proliferation of multiauthored technical
articles, no comment is made about the frequency of multiauthored
technical articles. In the next sentence, a frequency—“usually”—is given,
but only for multiauthored clinical trial reports. The test makers give you
hard data about the clinical trial reports, and then try to entice you into
picking a broader answer involving technical reports.

Answer choice (D): This is a Reverse answer that contains a complex pair
of reversed elements when matched against the stimulus. Let us compare
the stimulus and the answer choice, using italics to indicate the reversed
parts:

The stimulus states, “physics papers reporting results from
experiments using subsystems developed at various laboratories
generally have authors from each laboratory.”

Answer choice (D) states, “Physics papers authored by researchers
from multiple laboratories usually report results from experiments
using subsystems developed at each laboratory.”

[reop6780]

The correct answer is B while I chose D.

This is one of the MBT questions that I find at lost. You read over and over without much confidence in what to look for.

Anyway, I was concerned of "most" in answer B. "Most" is usually hard to reverse and to be correctly inferred.

Apparently it is correct answer this time.

B really sounds like what the stimuli delivers. Thus, it may sound ridiculous to ask how to reach answer B. - and I'm asking a favor anyway

Is it rephrased answer? (what type of correct answer?)

The problem is answer D seems to be simply rephrased answer for the last four sentences of the stimuli.

What is problem with answer D...?

[David Boyle]

The correct answer is B while I chose D.

This is one of the MBT questions that I find at lost. You read over and over without much confidence in what to look for.

Anyway, I was concerned of "most" in answer B. "Most" is usually hard to reverse and to be correctly inferred.

Apparently it is correct answer this time.

B really sounds like what the stimuli delivers. Thus, it may sound ridiculous to ask how to reach answer B. - and I'm asking a favor anyway

Is it rephrased answer? (what type of correct answer?)

The problem is answer D seems to be simply rephrased answer for the last four sentences of the stimuli.

What is problem with answer D...?

Hello,

Answer D is like a mistaken reversal, saying that from multiple labs usually cover subsystems, rather than the other way around.
Answer B could maybe be termed a rephrasing, yes.

David

[adlindsey]

I would like to see another approach/explanation of why B is the right answer. So far, the explanations on the bible and course book, which are the same, are not helping me. D, to me, looks like a perfect pre-phase. C, can also be deduced from the stimulus.

My biggest concern/problem is how "usually" is being translated into "most"??? These words have very different definitions. One relates to consistency/habitually and the other relates to an amount/quantity. Nowhere in the 2nd sentence do we know the amount of reports. It could be "some," or "many," which isn't necessarily "most." The word "most" in the answer choice would disqualify it since it's exaggerating and making it a broader statement that isn't known. This is also bringing in information outside of the stimulus.

I do not understand, at all, how the "translations" in answer B are correct, but when it comes to D, they're "reversed." The explanation for D states, "the numbers are reversed--authors from "each" lab have become researchers from "multiple" labs...." Well, it's a common sense assumption that "each" lab means there's "multiple" labs? D has words switched around, but the same meaning can be deduced to that of the stimulus.

[Dave Killoran]

Hi A,

Alright, let's look at this one and let's start with (B). The key sentence for (B) is the following: "Reports of clinical trials involving patients from several hospitals are usually coauthored by physicians from each participating hospital." I believe you also identified that as key , but ran into a problem with the idea of equating "usually" with "most." This is completely understandable at this point, and it reflects some of the foreshadowing we do in the course. We often like to "preview" ideas that will be covered in depth later on in the course because it helps prepare each student for when these ideas appear. Quantity terms will actually come up a lot in the ensuing days, and then when we discuss Formal Logic those ideas will be a lot easier to digest!

With that said, let's talk quantities and frequencies. As you get deeper into the LSAT, it becomes clear that the test makers use a very rigid set of definitions for quantities and frequencies, and they do not use what we would call the "real world" definitions. They use the logical definitions. One of the best examples of this is the term "some." Most people typically use this word to mean "a portion but not all." But on the LSAT, they don't use that definition, and instead use he definition that is used in logic: "at least one, possibly all." You'll see us go into more detail on that point later, but stop for a minute and consider what this point says about the LSAT: a word that most people would say they know perfectly well and are 100% comfortable using actually means something other than what most people think when it appears on the LSAT. Differences like these are one reason people struggle so much when they first start studying this test.

So, with that in mind, you can probably predict where I'm going next: the meaning of the word "usually." Here, the definition is very similar to the real world definition, but you probably haven't been exposed to the idea of how this type of frequency is then defined. With "usually," we know that it means "normally" or "customarily." If you think about these events on a 0-100 scale, where would you put "usually?" well, if it typically happens, that would mean it happens more often than not, right? Well that means it's over 50, and in LSAT parlance the range of 51-100 is the same as "most." what that does is actually quantify "usually." And, thinking in this manner allows you to see that other similar words and phrases, such as "typically," "normally," "generally," and "more often than not" all are the same as "most." The LSAT loves to rephrase words and ideas in answer choices, and so David Boyle was right when he said above that answer choice (B) is a rephrasing of this sentence. The beautiful thing is that now that you've seen this and thought about it, the next time you'll power right through this idea and be able to identify it immediately.

Ok, that's a start with answer choice (B). Let's discuss answer choice (D). While I realize you don't like the answer in the Bible, let's just keep in mind that that explanation is accurate, and as a student your job is to try to figure out exactly what it says because it's describing how the test makers think. It's also exceedingly specific in how the terms are switched around, and shows the stimulus against the answer choice and highlights the relevant difference sin italics, and then explains those differences in detail. And, in a Must question, differences such as the ones described in that text cause answer choices to be wrong (or perhaps better stated, cause the answer not to be supported, which makes it wrong).

That said, let's try it again by looking at what you didn't like. You said, "The explanation for D states, "the numbers are reversed--authors from "each" lab have become researchers from "multiple" labs...." Well, it's a common sense assumption that "each" lab means there's "multiple" labs?" This is where I'd say that this assumption caused you problems. I don't understand why it would be a commonsense assumption that "each" lab is "multiple" labs? There's no indication of that in the stimulus, and as a fairly well-informed person it's not something I would assume, or expect the average person to assume.

Finally, since I just noticed that you claimed (C) was also correct, let's explain that one too. (C) shows how closely the makers of the LSAT expect you to read. Having looked over your questions thus far, it's clear that the fine detail they require has thrown you off a bit. In each of your questions and related discussions of answers, you've allowed similar but different words and phrases to be used in the same way. Ironically, you've also at times attempted to parse out differences between words that actually do mean the same thing I see that happening when you think you know the meaning of a word in the real world—then you don't want to let it be equivalent with another word (see the "usually/most" issue above). Just keep an eye on this because your LSAT radar isn't perfectly calibrated yet. Fortunately, the more you learn and the more problems you do, the better that radar gets.

In (C), it states, "When a technical article has multiple authors, they are usually from several different institutions."What do you know about technical articles with multiple authors? Well, there's been a proliferation of them. Does that by itself mean most papers have authors from several different institutions? No, it doesn't. Proliferation just means the numbers are growing quickly, not that it's is a majority (and even the alternate definition of proliferation—a large number—doesn't mean majority). Now, continuing on in the stimulus, they give you two sub-components of the larger whole of technical articles. First you get information about "reports of clinical trials" and second you get information about "physics papers reporting results from experiments using subsystems developed at various laboratories." While each of those sub-groups typically has multiple authors, they are only sub-groups, and many other papers within the whole of "technical articles" might not have multiple authors. Note how they set you up for answer (C) by talking about things that are kind of similar in the stimulus, but which aren't exactly the same. In this case, there's a whole, and then subgroups.

This is a pretty deep explanation of this problem, and I've created it so that you see the way the test makers think and what they expect of you as a test taker. As you move forward, the most valuable thing you can do is attempt to apply this type of analysis to every wrong answer you encounter. Always ask, "Why is this incorrect? What to the test makers think makes this wrong?" In that sense, it becomes far more useful to examine why an answer is wrong than to attempt to prove it right.

Thanks!

[adlindsey]

Thank you for the long explanation, much appreciated. It makes sense now when applying it to frequency. I don't know how I didn't see that since frequency and consistency are the same--must've had a clouded mind that week. The convoluted language made this one extremely hard for me.

[adlindsey]

Almost a year later, I'm here again and still don't understand why D is wrong. To me it's a prephase, because why else would they talk about each lab, if there weren't talking about more than one lab?

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Alberto,

Good to hear from you again! Let's first start by going back up above, because to be honest the explanations I provided in the Bible and above are near the range of what I think is possible without me simply repeating myself. And, we know that previously that explanation helped make this clear, so I think it's a good starting point

To perhaps help, I'm going to quote both a portion of the stimulus and (D) here under Fair Use provisions:

• "Likewise, physics papers reporting results from experiments using subsystems developed at various laboratories generally have authors from each laboratory."
  
  "Physics papers authored by researchers from multiple laboratories usually report results from experiments using subsystems developed at each laboratory."

I understand why on the surface those two pieces looks similar, so I'm going to try a different tack, one that ignores what we spoke about and instead looks at this through a quasi-conditional lens. In this analysis, according to the stimulus, when we have "physics papers reporting results from experiments using subsystems developed at various laboratories" then we "generally have authors from each laboratory." But (D) reverses the idea, and takes it along the lines of: when we "Physics papers authored by researchers from multiple laboratories " then we "usually report results from experiments using subsystems developed at each laboratory." From this angle, you can see that the ideas are reversed in their relationship to each other. Here's an analogy that might help:

• "Football teams with many skilled players generally win a lot of games. "
  
  "Football teams that win a lot of games usually have many skilled players."

It's imperfect, but perhaps gets the idea across here that I'm talking about. And the two statements above, while sounding very similar, are not the same thing (unless you've already equated the two, which is not an assumption known to be made here or a commonsense one) .

Thanks!

[jessicamorehead]

I understand that typically, generally, usually, and more often than not are all equivalent to most (51-100).

What about many? Does many have any equivalent frequency terms?

Also, why doesn't many = most? Is it because many could be anywhere between (1-100) while most is always (51-100)?

[jessicamorehead]

Here is a summary of what I have because the most/many/some/generally etc things really trip me up. Can you confirm this?


going from "many" in stimulus to "some" in answer choice is perfectly fine, as they both mean 1-100

going from "many" in stimulus to "most" in answer choice is NOT okay, since many is 1-100, while most is 51-100 - right? But going from "most" to "many" would be acceptable?

going from "most" in stimulus to "some" in answer choice is okay, since "some" is encompassed in the "most" - right? But the reverse going from "some" to "most" would not be okay because you can't go from a smaller range to a larger one?

typically, generally, usually, more often than not are the frequency equivalents of "most", which all mean 51-100 so they are interchangeable always - correct?