Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Medium

PT147 S3 P3 Q18 Explanation

Theoretical vs. Clinical Equipoise

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsMain PointScience

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Passage

The following passage is based on an article 1987.

Medical practitioners are ethically required to prescribe the best available treatments. In ordinary patient-physician interactions, this obligation is unproblematic, but when physicians are clinical researchers in comparative studies of medical treatments, special issues arise. Comparative clinical trials involve withholding one or more of the treatments from at least one group of patients. no opinion as to which treatment is clinically superior—a state of mind usually termed “equipoise.”

Unfortunately, the conception of equipoise that is typically employed—which I will term “theoretical equipoise”—may be too strict. Theoretical equipoise exists only when the overall evidence for each of two treatment regimens is judged by each clinical researcher to be exactly balanced—an ideal hardly attainable in practice. Clinical researchers commonly have some preference is adhered to, few comparative clinical trials could commence and even fewer could proceed to completion.

These difficulties associated with theoretical equipoise suggest that a different notion of equipoise should be developed, one that I will label “clinical equipoise.” Clinical equipoise would impose rigorous ethical standards on comparative clinical trials without unreasonably constricting them. One reason for conducting comparative clinical trials is to resolve a current or imminent with each side recognizing that opposing experts can differ honestly in their interpretation of the evidence.

The very absence of consensus within the expert clinical community is what makes clinical equipoise possible. One or more of a comparative clinical trial’s researchers may have a decided treatment preference based on their assessments of the evidence. But that is no ethical bar to participation in the trial. The clinical researchers by a sizable constituency within the medical profession as a whole.

What this question is testing

Main Point

Your task

Capture the passage's overall primary point — the claim everything else supports.

Common trap

Answers that are true but too narrow (a single paragraph) or too broad (beyond the passage's scope).

Winning move

Summarize the whole passage in one sentence first, then match it to a choice.

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

The question
18.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main point of

Answer choices

  1. Wrong Emphasis: not about Solution7% picked this

    The ethical requirement that physicians prescribe the best available treatment to their patients is jeopardized by an overly

    In a Problem / Solution passage, we would expect if not demand that the main point answer's main clause is naming the solution. This answer doesn't say anything about clinical equipoise.

  2. Wrong Emphasis: not about Solution8% picked this

    Medical research conducted through comparative clinical trials is able to achieve more if the ethical requirements it is bound

    In a Problem / Solution passage, we would expect if not demand that the main point answer's main clause is naming the solution. This answer doesn't say anything about clinical equipoise. This answer just sounds like an Opinion the author would hold. It feels like a background assumption or motivation of the person who wrote this passage.

  3. Wrong Emphasis: not about Solution3% picked this

    It is sometimes ethically acceptable for a physician to participate in a clinical trial in which the physician has a decided treatment preference in

    In a Problem / Solution passage, we would expect if not demand that the main point answer's main clause is naming the solution. This answer doesn't say anything about clinical equipoise. This answer also sounds like an Opinion the author would hold. It feels like a background assumption of the person who wrote this passage.

  4. Correct80% picked this

    Clinical equipoise should be adopted because it is less likely to unreasonably constrict the conducting of comparative clinical

    Why this is right

    Strangely, this is the only answer that mentioned the author's Solution / Recommendation: clinical equipoise. If an author wrote a passage to recommend a solution to a problem, then the one-sentence that the author would want you to know ... her main point .... would be "Here is my recommendation."

    Skill tested: Main Point · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

  5. Wrong Emphasis: not about Solution2% picked this

    Even though comparative clinical trials often fail to meet the standard of theoretical equipoise, they should not, for

    In a Problem / Solution passage, we would expect if not demand that the main point answer's main clause is naming the solution. This answer doesn't say anything about clinical equipoise. This answer again sounds like an Opinion the author would hold. It feels like a background assumption of the person who wrote this passage.

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