Q12 - In 1980 health officials began

[tzyc]

Is (D) correct because since they can now find the problem earlier, they find younger ages people suffer it too and that adds the number of patient...?
And is (E) wrong because if the total number who continue to sunbathe does not change so whether they use the sunblock or not does not increase the number of patient?
Or is it just because it is absurd to think sunblack can cause skin cancer because it's supposed to prevent skin cancer...

[fmuirhea]

The key to this question is a concept that shows up somewhat often on the LSAT: the difference between actual cases and reported cases.

You're asked to resolve a discrepancy, so the first step is to identify that discrepancy. In this case, there's been a dramatic rise in the number of newly reported cases of melanoma (a form of skin cancer that results from prolonged sun exposure) despite the fact that people are now aware of the dangers of the sun and have subsequently cut back on sunbathing. So, since people are reducing their time in the sun, you'd perhaps think that cases of melanoma would go down, but they've gone up.

The key, again, is the idea of reported cases. Whenever you see this type of qualification on the LSAT (particularly when passages discuss studies), keep an eye on it. If scientists are now better able to detect melanoma in its early stages, it could explain the steep increase in reported cases. This doesn't necessarily mean that there are more people with melanoma, but just that there are more people who are identified as having melanoma.

(A) This doesn't tell us anything about what happened in 1982 to cause a spike in reported cases.
(B) Again, this doesn't explain the spike in 1982.
(C) Irrelevant.
(E) This might actually make the discrepancy worse, as you'd expect less melanoma if more people are using effective sunblock.

[ohthatpatrick]

AWESOME response. You should teach this stuff. Fwiw, I was predicting they were gonna go with the ol' "Melanoma takes a long time to develop, so even though people stopped sunbathing as much post-1980, the damage they had done pre-1980 finally started to surface in 1982."

Just goes to show how predictions can be tricky on Resolve/Explain questions ... it's important to stay flexible.

[alexroark5]

The only thing I would add is that answer choice C actually makes the discrepancy more perplexing. If scientists reported that the need for exposure to sunlight to produce vitamin D, which fights skin cancer, is less than previously thought, then we are taking away an additional incentive for people to be in the sun, which would cause us to believe that people are spending less time in the sun in 1982, which obviously makes the outcome of having an increase in number of melanoma cases in 1982 even more perplexing.