Logical Reasoning

PT133 · S3 · Q11 People who browse the web

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People who browse the web for medical information often cannot discriminate between scientifically valid information and quackery.

Conclusion

People who rely on the web when attempting to diagnose their medical conditions are likely to do themselves more harm than good.

Evidence

People who browse the web for medical information often cannot differentiate between scientifically valid info and quackery (and the quackery may be even more appealing than the valid info).

Evaluation

There's a small difference between the trigger in the conclusion and trigger in the premise: conclusion - people who rely on the web when attempting to self-diagnose vs. premise - people who browse the web for medical info

Since the author is equating those, we can say that she's assuming that . However, that's a very fair assumption, so it might not be very likely that LSAT would test that one.

The author is arguing this chain of ideas: rely on browse can't tell do more web to → web for → between → harm self med science & than good diagnose info quackery

The middle arrow has been established, but the first and third have not.

Goal

Look for an answer attaching "rely on web to self-diagnose" to "browse web for medical info", or one attaching "can't tell different between science and quackery" to "do more harm than good".

11.

Which one of the following is an assumption the argument requires?

  1. People who browse the web

    Reversed Logic

    We would want an answer that says that "People who rely on the web to diagnose their medical conditions sometimes/typically browse the web for medical information". If we negate (A), it's saying "49% or less of the time, people who browse the web for medical info are trying to diagnose their own medical condition". That's fine. It doesn't hurt the author if people are only trying to self-diagnose a minority of the time. The author is just concluding that "if they go from just browsing medical stuff to actually trying to self-diagnose, they are likely to do more harm than good".

    21% picked this

  2. Correct

    People who attempt to diagnose

    Why this is right

    "Unless = if not", so this conditional says Not relying exclusively Likely to do on scientifically valid ? themselves more information harm than good This seems close to one of the two assumptions we predicted: can't differentiate do more between sci ? harm than good and quackery We'd have to ask ourselves if it's fair for us to assume that if you can't differentiate between science and quackery (and if the quackery is often more appealing), then are you relying at least in part on non-scientifically valid information? I'm pretty troubled that a correct answer on Necessary Assumption is expecting us to say "Yes" to that. This is a level 5 in many ways because it's kind of a 'broken' question. It seems to allow a looseness in language that historically NA answers do not. But since we're always judging by the standard of "best available answer", we end up having to go with this answer. The fact that people can't differentiate between quackery means they may read valid and invalid stuff as they try to self-diagnose. It's impossible to judge which info they'll ultimately rely on, but this answer is trying to say, "Our author assumes that if there's any quackery in the mix, then they're likely to do more harm than good". That's pretty fair.

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

    51% picked this

  3. People who have sufficient medical

    Opposite Logic

    Since the author was assuming "if you can't discriminate, more harm than good" LSAT writes an illegal opposite trap answer that sounds like "if you can discriminate, won't do more harm than good"

    5% picked this

  4. Many people who browse the

    Out of Scope: many assume

    All we know is that people browsing the web for medical stuff often can't tell the difference between scientifically valid and quackery. We have no idea whether any of them assume that "if it's not clearly written, it's not scientifically valid". If this answer were true, it would convey that not only are people more likely to find quackery appealing, they're also more likely to assume it's more scientifically valid. That would strengthen the author's case that people are going to end up relying on quackery, but this answer is in no way necessary to the logic. If we negate this, it doesn't hurt the author's argument in any way.

    8% picked this

  5. People attempting to diagnose their

    Reversed Logic Too Strong

    Reversed Logic Too Strong: rely on X vs. Y Since we wanted an assumption that said people can't tell likely do themselves between sci ? more harm than good and quackery LSAC writes an illegal backwards answer that says likely do themselves rely on quackery more harm than good ? instead of sci The idea that they are relying on quackery instead of science (all or nothing) is also stronger than anything the author was assuming.

    15% picked this

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