Logical Reasoning

PT148 · S1 · Q11 A year ago several regional hospitals

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A year ago several regional hospitals attempted to reduce the number of patient injuries resulting from staff errors by implementing a plan to systematically record all such errors.

Conclusion (clearly)

The knowledge that their errors were being monitored made the hospital staff more meticulous in carrying out their patient-care duties.

Evidence

Ever since the hospital instituted a plan to record all staff errors, the rate of patient injuries resulting from such errors has gone down a bunch.

Evaluate

There are a lot of copies of this same argument throughout the LSAT canon:

Premise 1: A policy change was made Premise 2: A change has been observed. Conclusion: The policy change was the reason

It might be,

or it might be,

But whenever an LSAT author presents a Curious Fact and then concludes something that reveals a Causal Explanation being assumed, then we are supposed to worry about 1. Alternate Explanations for the Curious Fact 2. the plausibility of the Author's Explanation

Here, our curious fact is, and the causal explanation being assumed is that

Goal

Since this is Strengthen, we want to either rule out an alternate explanation for the curious fact (e.g. in the parts of the hospital where they don't record such errors, we haven't seen a reduction in patient injuries")

11.

Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

  1. Before the plan was implemented

    Weakens, if anything

    This actually hurts the plausibility that this new plan to record errors is the Causal Difference-Maker that led to the reduction in injuries. After all, if there were already a lot of accountability for errors, then there was already a strong disincentive to messing up.

    1% picked this

  2. The incidence of patient injuries

    Weakens

    This decreases the plausibility that the Plan was the causal difference-maker and suggests that something else is happening in the region that is causing the injuries to go down. In the LSAT biz, we call the form of this plausibility-weakener No Cause, Effect of "Effect w/o Cause" The author is thinking Cause Effect Plan to record errors Fewer patient injuries So we could strengthen by showing that where there was no plan (no cause), there was no improvement in patient injuries (no effect). Instead, this answer is giving us the weaken version of that, showing that at hospitals where there was no plan (No Cause) there was still a reduction in injuries (Effect).

    1% picked this

  3. The plan did not call

    Weakens, if anything

    This pretty much has no impact, because it's not a very impactful idea, but saying that staff members weren't recorded for close calls that could have resulted in injuries but luckily didn't means that the oversight wasn't as harsh as it could have been. The harsher the oversight, the more we're strengthening the author's story, that staff at the hospital were coerced into being more meticulous to prevent errors. Since this is making the oversight seem more lenient, it's going in a weakening direction.

    1% picked this

  4. Correct

    The decrease in the incidence

    Why this is right

    If the injuries started decreasing before the staff even knew they were being surveilled, then that would kind of ruin the author's story. The author thinks that the staff's "knowledge that their errors were being carefully monitored" was the causal difference-maker, so he wouldn't be expecting there to be a reduction in injuries unless the staff was aware they were being monitored. This answer is pretty close to what we'll see on Necessary Assumption -- it establishes a baseline of plausibility of the author's explanation. And it's similar to Necessary Assumption in the sense that the easiest way to like this answer is to think about how badly it would weaken the argument if this weren't the case. If we said that the injuries were decreasing before the staff even knew it was being monitored, that would be a compelling (No Cause, Effect) weakener. This answer is a weakly compelling (No Cause, No Effect) strengthener, because it's saying in the time period before the staff was aware they were being analyzed (No Cause) we hadn't yet seen a reduction in injuries (No Effect). When we're doing Strengthen on an Explain the Curious Fact type argument, the most common form the correct answer takes is some version of this No Cause / No Effect structure. In our write-up of the stimulus, we predicted a different version: in areas of the hospital where the plan was not used, there was no reduction in such injuries.

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

    97% picked this

  5. Under the plan, the hospitals'

    Weakens, if anything

    The harsher the oversight, the more we're strengthening the author's story, which is that staff at the hospital were coerced into being more meticulous because they knew their errors were being monitored and recorded. Since this is making the oversight seem more lenient (first offense was just a slap on the wrist), it's going in a weakening direction.

    1% picked this

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