#15 - Researcher: Every year approximately the same number

[Adam Tyson]

Actually, ninamichelle, the broad language of answer C is entirely typical of the LSAT! They love that kind of language, in answer choices (right and wrong ones), in stems, and in stimuli. To better prepare yourself for that, try keeping your prephrases broad and flexible. For example, in this case, my prephrase was "maybe some of those people were bound to die soon anyway". Very broad, no mention of iatrogenic anythings or of hospitals or patients. Broad language allows you greater flexibility when sorting losers and contenders and can help prevent you from prematurely chucking out a good answer. If you end up with multiple contenders, you can always "tighten down" your language in comparing the remaining answer choices to see what the differences are and how those differences matter, but if you have already rejected the right answer then no amount of subsequent "loosening up" of your language will help with the remaining contenders unless you hit the reset button and start the question all over again.

Think in broad, abstract terms. Paraphrase arguments, look for methods of reasoning (which are abstractions themselves), and cast a wide net, and you will be more likely to catch your prize fish.

Good luck!

[AthenaDalton]

Hi Nina,

I wish I had a more straightforward answer for you, but all I can do is encourage you to trust your instincts! Your prephrase perfectly matched the correct answer -- it's clear that your work in mastering that concept is paying off.

Sometimes on the LSAT, a speaker will make a very broad claim, and it's appropriate to counter it with a very broad counterclaim. Here, the researcher makes the staggering claim that the number of deaths could be cut in half annually if hospitals took the step of preventing iatrogenic disease. Any claim about cutting the number of deaths per year in half is going to be vulnerable to a wide array of criticisms. Perhaps individuals in hospitals tend to be much older than the general population, or are in much worse health. Just because a patient doesn't die of an infection they caught at the hospital doesn't mean that they won't die later that same year of old age, respiratory disease, or whatever condition required them to be admitted in the first place.

Trust your instincts, and keep up the good work!

Athena Dalton

[ninamichelle]

Athena and Adam - thank you for your responses! I really appreciate the input you both offered.

It seems I just got a little too specific with my paraphrasing - this question is a good reminder that broad claim can lead to a broad answer choice (much like my not-so-straightforward post led to a not-so-straightforward answer Athena ).

[mtdaniel]

This is a tough one for me. When I read the stimulus I don't really see a flaw. When I read the stimulus I get the following information, which I assume to be true:

Premise 1: Every year some people die of iatrogenic disease.

Premise 2: Every year some people die of something besides iatrogenic disease.

Premise 3: The number of people who die according to Premise 1 and Premise 2 are about the same.

Conclusion: If all iatrogenic disease were prevented, number of deaths per year would be half.

To me this is logically consistent, or am I missing something?

The argument that "people die eventually" is only valid in the long term as the probabilities of other causes of death increase. But this isn't what the conclusion is saying, it's concluding what would happen once iatrogenic disease is no longer a cause of death. The immediate effect would be about half as many people dying per day/month/year/whatever, until some of the people that would have died earlier start to die later of other causes years down the road.

I guess I think of it like this:

Consider that since the beginning of time 50 people die every year from iatrogenic disease and 50 people die from heart attacks (consider this is the only other disease and represents all other causes of death).

At a certain point it time, all iatrogenic disease becomes preventable, therefore no one can die from iatrogenic disease from that point forward. The immediate effect of this is that those 50 people who would have died in the following year will likely not die, unless the probability of all other causes of death (in this case heart attacks) increases. The stimulus says nothing about increasing numbers of people dying from other causes of death, so this number would remain constant going forward.

Therefore, shouldn't the number of people who die per year be decreased by half once iatrogenic disease no longer kills anyone?

I feel like (C) is taking a lot of liberty with assuming things outside of the stimulus. It's trying to say something like "Well, if people stop dying from iatrogenic disease, they'll eventually get older and die from something else" This is a common sense assumption, but it's not sticking to what would happen exactly when iatrogenic disease stops becoming a cause of death.

I guess (C) is also kind of assuming that the researcher is talking about average deaths per year over the long term? But isn't that assuming a lot from the stimulus?

For example, if the stimulus gave the opposite case where a new cause of death appeared, I think it would be absurd to make the same assumption.

Consider the following counter example:

Researcher: A new cause of death appears will kill about the same number of people as all other causes of death combined, therefore the number of deaths per year would double.

That seems completely logical to me, and consistent with reality. When Covid hit, deaths increased, when it started to be treated effectively, deaths decreased. Now, if you want to say "well, some of those people would have died by some other cause, and on average it didn't make a difference" that's a totally different discussion about demographics and population parameters and way beyond the scope of the stimulus in this case.

But anyways, for the sake of doing well on the LSAT I will simply study this problem and take the correct answer as given even though I don't think this argument is flawed.

[Adam Tyson]

I think you are missing something crucial here, mtdaniel, and that is that iatrogenic disease is "a direct result of medical treatments or hospitalization." That means that people that die from it are already being treated for something. So if someone is in the hospital because of, say, kidney failure, and they die of an infection they pick up in the hospital, then they died of iatrogenic disease rather than from their kidney disease. But whose to say they wouldn't have died anyway? Not years later for some unrelated reason, but from the kidney disease that put them in the hospital in the first place?

Same thing with surgeries gone wrong. If someone is being operated on, and their heart gives out because of a bad reaction to the anesthesia, or if the surgeon nicks an artery and they bleed out, then their cause of death is iatrogenic. But they were getting surgery for something, perhaps something life-threatening, so perhaps they would have died even if the surgery went well, or if the surgery had not been performed?

The unwarranted assumption here is that but for the iatrogenic cause of death, they would have survived their treatment.