A year ago several regional hospitals

Answer choices

1. A

   Weakens, if anything1% picked this

   Before the plan was implemented the hospitals already had a policy of thoroughly investigating any staff error that causes

   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%
2. B

   Weakens1% picked this

   The incidence of patient injuries at a regional hospital that did not participate in the plan also decreased

   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%
3. C

   Weakens, if anything1% picked this

   The plan did not call for the recording of staff errors that could have caused patient

   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%
4. D

   Correct97% picked this

   The decrease in the incidence of the injuries did not begin at any hospital until the staff there became aware that the

   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%
5. E

   Weakens, if anything1% picked this

   Under the plan, the hospitals' staff members who were found to have made errors that caused injuries to patients received only

   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%