#19 - The proposal to extend clinical trials, which are

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (A)

The problem with the stimulus is that the only support it provides for not extending clinical trials to surgical procedures is the fact that there is a difference between clinical and surgical procedures. While that difference may weaken the case for extending clinical trials to surgical procedures, it certainly is not sufficient to lead to the conclusion that such trials should not be implemented.

Answer Choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. The stimulus argument weakens the idea of extending clinical trials to surgical procedures by showing that human differences between surgeons will affect such trials. It fails to take into account, however, that despite those differences, important information can be gleaned from such trials in showing that a new procedure is intrinsically more harmful, regardless of who is performing it.

Answer Choice (B) This answer choice can really be connected in no coherent way to the stimulus argument, so it is not the correct answer choice. There is nothing in the stimulus that could possibly lead to a conclusion that the proposal to extend clinical trials to surgical procedures is deliberately crude in a way designed to elicit criticism.

Answer Choice (C) The stimulus argument is based upon the different skill levels of different surgeons. It has nothing to do with changes in the skills of an individual surgeon through time.

Answer Choice (D) While the stimulus argument does not present any scientific evidence to back up its contention of dissimilarities between different surgeons, this is a pretty obvious argument that would not seem to need scientific evidence to support it. We can all accept that different surgeons have different skill levels without the support of scientific evidence.

Answer Choice (E) While this may be a flaw in the etiquette of the argument, it is clearly not a flaw in the reasoning of the argument.

For additional information, please see an expanded discussion of this problem below: lsat/viewtopic.php?f=675&t=9091&p=38002#p38002

[lsatstudier]

Hi,

Could someone please explain what type of flaw this stimulus has? I'm still not clear on why the answer is A.

Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

Good question, Studier, as this one doesn't at first glance fall obviously into one of the classic flaw categories. That's okay, though, because the goal of classifying the different flaws is not to be able to put every single flaw into a tidy box but rather to give us some language and tools with which to shorten the path we take to get to understanding and analysis. In other words, while you should memorize the categories and know when you can put flaws into them, you also want to be able to use what you know about the categories to help clarify your understanding of any particular flaw.

the mistake here involves the use of "evidence errors" and then in the smaller subcategory of "some evidence against a claim is taken as proof that the claim is false." Here, we have some evidence that a comparison between pharmaceuticals and surgical procedures is not a perfect one, and that "some" evidence is used to prove that we should not treat the two things similarly in a particular way. This overlooks the possibility that while the comparison is not great, there still may be some value to giving them similar treatment. That bit of evidence—that the comparison or analogy is a poor one in some respects—is not enough to discount the potential value of a clinical trial.

Don't get too caught up in the labels. They are a useful shortcut to reaching some understanding, like a sort of mental shorthand, but they are just one way to get true understanding and to help analyze what you see. Use them when they work, and try another approach when they aren't apparent.

Good luck! You can do it!

[laurat]

Is this essentially a weaken problem?

(7-83)

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi Laura,

Flaw questions are similar to Weaken questions in a few ways. Both types of questions will present an argument that is not completely valid. Both question types will lead you to consider ways that we can object to the conclusion.

The differences though are very important to keep in mind. Flaw questions will require you to abstract the reasoning used in the argument to an incredible degree, while Weaken questions are often dealt with best by personalizing the argument and selecting an answer that deals with the topic of the answer. Thus, Flaw answer choices will give you very abstract language whereas Weaken answer choices typically contain very concrete language.

Perhaps most importantly is how you deal with new information in the answer choices. Since Flaw in the Reasoning questions ask you to identify or describe a flaw in the stimulus, you should look out for and immediately eliminate choices that bring in new information. Correct Weaken answer choices will bring in new information, and the Question Stem itself will explicitly qualify each answer choice with the phrases such as “if true."

Let me know if you have questions about this one in particular. Thanks!

[AnnBar]

I have been trying to find the question in my book to reply to your answer but unfortunately, I am not able to locate it. Do you know in what section of live online course books I can find this question?

[Kristina Moen]

Hi Ann,

If you are in the full-length course, you should find this question in the 2nd book in the lesson 7 homework. Specifically, it's on p. 7-83.

[egarcia193]

Hi,
I got this one wrong, I chose C and had D as a contender I eliminated A because I couldn't understand what it was even saying and from my interpretation of it was that it actually strengthened the argument by giving a reason why we shouldn't extend clinical trials to surgeries if they will be found to be more harmful than other treatments so I eliminated it. I chose C because I thought it was an assumption the argument relied on because if only a few great surgeons could perform a new surgery and if other surgeons can not get better and increase their skills to perform it then it's basically pointless to allow if, for example, only one person in the world could perform the surgery. I don't really understand what A is saying and how it fits into the argument could Someone please explain? the explanation above kind of helps but I still don't really understand it

[mshaikh]

Hi Powerscore,

I was thrown off by the wording of answer choice A and left it as a contender. I couldn't really figure out this question and was between answer choice A and D. I now understand why D doesn't work.But can someone please explain what A is saying?

I didn't like how it was worded because scientifically that doesn't make sense. Surgical procedures and best treatments are not the same thing. If answer choice A said this instead, " does not consider that new surgical procedures might be found to be intrinsically more harmful than the best procedures previously available (and thus should be tested more before being implemented)." Maybe my understanding is wrong because they aren't trying to equate the two? Is this answer choice pointing to differences between the pharmaceutical and surgical procedures? Please explain what this AC is trying to say.

[Dave Killoran]

Hi M,

Thanks for the question! This one is very tricky, with only around 32% of test takers correctly selecting (A). And, as a reference, answer choice (C) was 22% and answer choice (D) was 27%. When you have three answers with high percentages like that, it tells you two things: this is a hard problem and that students were confused by the right answer (and thus driven to other attractive answers).

First, you are right in that they aren't trying to equate the two in the correct answer, and I think that point is likely what caused problems for you in your first read-through. So, let's first start by reviewing the argument, and then move to (A).

The argument is saying that a common method for testing drugs (clinical trials) should not be used to test surgical procedures because the success of a surgical procedure is always tied to how good the surgeon is. This makes some sense at first glance, because a drug is just that: you take it and it either works or doesn't, and there's no skill involved in taking or administering it. A new surgical procedure though, is performed by a surgeon, and if that surgeon is no good, the procedure would tend to be less successful whereas if the surgeon is brilliant, the procedure would tend to be more successful (or so the argument implies).

Most people the argument and think that it sounds relatively strong, which then causes a bit of concern when they see the Flaw in the Reasoning a question stem. But if you look at my explanation of the stimulus, in the last few lines you can see a potential problem, namely that while the skill of the surgeon might unquestionably play a role in the success of a new procedure, what if some procedures are just inherently good procedure and other are inherently bad? If that were the case, even a bad surgeon could successfully perform the really good procedures whereas a great surgeon might never be able to get a bad procedure to work.

And that is the point being made in (A): what if it's the case that some procedures are just terrible regardless of the skill of the surgeon, and that by instituting clinical trials we could discover that? Basically, the argument forgot that despite the importance of a surgeon's skill, clinical trials have the possibility of showing that some procedures are just bad, and worse than the current approaches. To make a quick and very rough analogy, imagine there was a basketball play you wanted to test out. Even though the skill of the players will have an impact on how well the play works in an actual game, perhaps some plays are just inherently better than others, and because of that they always have a higher chance of success regardless of the quality of the team running the play.

A second confusion with (A) occurs because the test makers used the word "treatment" in the second half of the answer instead of "procedure." "Treatment" as an idea does not have to refer to drugs, and in this case they meant it to refer to the best surgical procedures that are currently in use. In other words, (A) is saying that the clinical trials for surgical procedures might reveal whether the new procedure was worse than the current best procedure. I personally don't think they meant this to be confusing, it was just a test writer was thinking that "treatment" and "procedure" were equivalent (which they can be), and forgot about "drugs" being a treatment as well. I suspect that's the case because the idea in (A) is tricky enough by itself that it doesn't need word games to make it even harder.

Final thoughts for those who were between (A) and any other answer choice: if you are ever down between multiple answers and have ones that you don't like vs ones you don't understand, choose the one you don't understand! For example, in (D), this is an answer that describes something that happened, but it isn't a flaw (they difference described between drugs and procedures is more a commonsense piece of information). So (D) is something that happened but it doesn't describe an error. If you felt (D) was not that great but were unsure about (A), then don't pick (D).

With (C), is that an actual assumption, that they remain unchanged? No, it is not. But here's a second takeaway from this question: in Flaw or Method questions, if an answer claims a certain assumption was made, you can use the Assumption Negation Technique to test whether it really is an assumption. Here, if you said, a surgeon's skill change throughout the surgeon's professional life," would that hurt the argument? No it wouldn't, mainly because the author would say that helps the argument by showing that surgeon skill is having an impact (and, if you assume that for most of a surgeon's life her skills get better due to experience, it helps the argument even more).

Overall, a really great problem to analyze, and you can see why this one is tough. Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!