#21 - Essayist: Winners of a Nobel prize for science, who

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi TigerJin,

The stimulus doesn't say they are ONLY motivated by financial gain; it just says financial gain is a motivator for them. They could also be motivated by other things, including love of discovery. Accordingly, we just can't say one way or the other whether they are motivated at all by love of discovery.

[BostonLawGuy]

I can see how C is correct, but I don't see how B is wrong. The stimulus says that professional scientists are "often" motivated by financial gain and that they "typically" are Nobel prize winners. So couldn't we say that Nobel prize winners are "typically" not motivated by love of discovery?

Thank you for your answer.

I will chime in in order to help future students.

The stimulus states that UNLIKE professionals, amateurs are SOLEY motived by the "love of discovery ALONE"

We can infer that amateurs have only one motivating factor. Professionals in contrast can have multiple. (they are unlike amateurs).

[Robert Carroll]

BLG,

That is true and is why answer choice (C) is correct. The motivations of amateurs are always singular; the motivations of professionals can be mixed. So both your statement and Emily's statement are correct about their respective motivations.

Robert Carroll

[LSAT student]

Not sure why (A) is incorrect. Read through the explanation that it's because we don't know if the amateur scientists won Nobel Prizes, but the answer choice says "Some amateur scientists who did not win a Nobel Prize..." That means we know whether or not they won a prize right?

To pick (C) it seems like it requires the reader to understand that there are far fewer Nobel Prize winners than there are scientists out there, since it says "many". Is this the right approach?

[Adam Tyson]

To pick answer C requires combining two facts: 1) amateurs have provided many significant contributions, and 2) amateurs are motivated only by the love of discovery. Hence, we can conclude that many significant contributions were made by scientists who were motivated only by the love of discovery.

But answer A requires knowing something we don't know: did the amateurs who made those contributions get Nobel prizes for their work or not? If they did not, then A has to be true, but if they did then A would not be true. Since we are missing that key piece of info, we cannot say that answer A MUST be true, but only that it COULD be true.

If you're not sure still about answer A, answer this question for yourself: did any amateurs get the Nobel? If you can't answer it, that should be all you need to know to see that A isn't certain the way C is!