Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Easy

PT105 S2 Q2 Explanation

A director of the Rexx Pharmaceutical

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

TopicsWeaken

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Stimulus

A director of the Rexx Pharmaceutical Company argued that the development costs for new vaccines that the health department has requested should be subsidized by the government, since the marketing of vaccines promised to be less profitable than the marketing of any other pharmaceutical product. In support of this claim the director that combat diseases and chronic illnesses are administered many times to each patient.

What this question is testing

Weaken

Your task

Find the choice that makes the argument's conclusion less likely to be true.

Common trap

Answers that look negative but attack a claim the argument never relied on.

Winning move

Find the assumption the argument depends on, then pick the choice that undermines it.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
2.

Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the support offered by the company director for the claim concerning

Answer choices

  1. Correct83% picked this

    Vaccines are administered to many more people than are most other

    Why this is right

    This by no means proves that the vaccine will be as profitable, but it creates a way to push back on her logic. The author points out a negative difference, when it comes to revenue, between a vaccine and other drugs: vaccine only gets given once / other drugs are given many times. This answer points out a positive difference, when it comes to revenue, between a vaccine and other drugs: the vaccine will be given to many more people than most other drugs are given to. It might be that a one-time vaccine given to 100 million people makes as much money as a many-time drug given to the small subset of the population that has the condition that drug treats.

    Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

  2. Strengthens4% picked this

    Many of the diseases that vaccines are designed to prevent can be successfully

    This actually makes it seem like people wouldn't even need to get the vaccines, since the diseases they protect from can be effectively treated by medicine.

  3. No Impact2% picked this

    Pharmaceutical companies occasionally market products that are neither medicines

    It should be a RED ALERT whenever you see soft, wishy-washy language like "sometimes, occasionally, can, may, might, not all, not always" on questions like Weaken, Strengthen, and Paradox (all of which ask for the answer that does the most). Stuff besides drugs and vaccines are just out of scope for this conversation.

  4. Strengthens1% picked this

    Pharmaceutical companies other than the Rexx Pharmaceutical Company

    This means that Rexx will not have the monopoly on this vaccine. People can get the vaccine from many different companies, which makes it seem less likely that the vaccine will be a big-money maker for Rexx.

  5. Too Weak10% picked this

    The cost of administering a vaccine is rarely borne by the pharmaceutical company that

    We never got the impression that the author was concerned about the cost of administering the vaccine. Yes, if we're trying to argue that profitability from the vaccine could be higher than she's thinking, this answer moves in the right direction (you'll rarely have this cost to worry about). But since it wasn't clear that the author was ever thinking that Rexx would be paying for the cost of administering a vaccine, this doesn't seem to change her thinking in any way. The key mental hurdle for the author was "one-time vs. many-time" administration, not about "who pays for the cost of administration".

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