Q8 - To qualify as a medical

[GeneW]

I understand C is the right answer. Can someone please explain why E is incorrect. Thank you.

[Djjustin818]

Maybe E is wrong because the conclusion is referring to someone who "has already qualified" as a medical specialist. And it doesn't mention anything about completing an evaluation program.

I don't know if that's accurate, but that's why I didn't choose it. I also thought C destroyed the argument much better whereas E is a little iffy with the "usually" considering the conclusion of the stimulus is an absolute statement (i.e. "anyone").

I'd like some more insight on this question too. Thanks!

[tian.application]

my thoughts:

i think whoever chose E equaled "recognized medical specialist" with " 6-10 years of training (medical school + residency) + completion of evaluation program". But this training+evaluation is not the necessary condition for someone to become a recognized specialist. Maybe a prominent and world renowned specialist never went to college and developed his own special surgery technique. So answer E's necessary condition is not necessary here...

[tommywallach]

Hey Guys,

I'm just gonna take this one on from bottom to top.

Core:

Conclusion: Don't remove all the weeds.
Premise: Weeds hurt productivity, but not as much as the work of total weeding.

Principle: Choose the lesser of two evils.

(A) This implies that people need imperfections, but the prompt says that weeds are unequivocally bad.

(B) This doesn't have a comparison between two things that hurt (weeds, the work of weeding).

(C) CORRECT. Aha! It's about an efficiency choice between two things. Perfect!

(D) This says it isn't possible to remove all the imperfections. The prompt never said it was impossible to remove all the weeds, only that it would be a waste of time.

(E) This starts out similar to the prompt, but then the last sentence takes a nosedive. This would mean that removing weeds leads to greater weeds, which is neither stated nor sensible!

Hope that helps!

-t

[sumukh09]

Hey Tommy,

If you could re-do an explanation for this question that would be great! I think you gave an explanation for a different question. This thread is for Question 8 on the second LR section of PT69, the necessary assumption question about qualifying as a medical specialist.

In particular, I would appreciate if you would be able to give a more thorough explanation as to why E is incorrect; I think it is incorrect because competence to practice in one's specialty is not sufficient to assure that one usually would have to complete 6 - 10 years of medical training beyond a university degree.

The conditional logic chains I see in this question are the following:

1 Qualify as a medical specialist ---> usually takes an undergrad degree, 4 years of medical school, followed by 2 to 6 year's of residency in one's specialty

2 Recognized Specialist ---> evaluation program directed by a medical specialty board ---> Competent

Answer choice C is just the contrapositive of that second chain of events

Answer choice E, on the other hand, tries to intertwine the two chains by linking "competence" in the second chain to the necessary conditions of the 1st chain, which is an invalid operation.

Let me know what you think!

[tommywallach]

Hey Sumukh,

Oops! I did question 8 from the first section. Oh well. Let's try this again.

Premise: MS have years and years of training/programs
Conclusion: Anyone who has qualified is competent
Assumption: Years of training makes one competent

(A) This is about motivation as a function of becoming qualified. Motivation is irrelevant, because we care about competence.

(B) This goes too far. This is a sufficient assumption, but it isn't necessary. We don't need the most talented people, we only need competent people.

(C) Voila. Exactly what we need. This says that incompetent people are weeded out by the whole long program.

(D) Usually is already wrong, because we need ANYONE who has qualified to be competent. That can't be "usually." It has to be ALWAYS (we don't even have to read past that word).

(E) Same problem as above.

That's actually the best way to look at it, Sumukh. It seems to me you may be overcomplicating the issue by worrying about anything else! : )

-t

[pewals13]

If I conclude that something is "always" the case would I have to assume that it is "usually" the case? (Just like if I conclude every block is blue I have to assume some blocks are blue) Does the temporal nature of the adjective change the dynamic in this case?

Also, does a clear line of distinction need to be drawn between "medical specialist" and "recognized medical specialist"? Would it be incorrect to assume one subsumes the other?

I eliminated (D) and (E) because they both suggest that all medical specialists are competent when the argument only concludes that all recognized medical specialists are so.

If the argument concluded that "all medical specialists are competent" would there be no correct answer because any one of the necessary conditions (medical school, residency, university) could be sufficient for competency?


Thanks!

[maryadkins]

If I conclude that something is "always" the case would I have to assume that it is "usually" the case? (Just like if I conclude every block is blue I have to assume some blocks are blue) Does the temporal nature of the adjective change the dynamic in this case?

Yes, all includes sometimes and always includes usually. I don't know what you mean by temporal nature. I'd have to see an example.

Also, does a clear line of distinction need to be drawn between "medical specialist" and "recognized medical specialist"? Would it be incorrect to assume one subsumes the other?

Medical specialists subsumes recognized medical specialists.

If the argument concluded that "all medical specialists are competent" would there be no correct answer because any one of the necessary conditions (medical school, residency, university) could be sufficient for competency?

No, it'd still be flawed. Because we don't know why any of these criteria would make one competent. That's being assumed.

[tangdanni422]

I got C for my timed practice but I am confused during the blind review.

Since we are here to look for a necessary assumption, would C be too general to be a necessary one? C is more likely a sufficient assumption because it talks about the specialty in general.

Do we here have an answer choice that is both necessary and sufficient?

[maryadkins]

Yes, it is both necessary and sufficient. It is necessary because if you negate it the argument is destroyed. It is sufficient because it allows the conclusion to be drawn.

[asafezrati]

Yes, it is both necessary and sufficient. It is necessary because if you negate it the argument is destroyed. It is sufficient because it allows the conclusion to be drawn.

But C seems to go outside the boundaries of the medical specialists. C can also apply to engineers and accountants. I've learned that this is a big no-no for necessary assumption questions.

Also, I wouldn't eliminate D and E only because of the word "usually." For necessary assumption question it is pretty legit - it's weaker than the "no one" in answer choice C.

I would eliminate D because it takes a part of the process of being a medical specialist and makes it sufficient.
I would eliminate E because in the conclusion the necessary condition is "competent" and not the other way around.

Help?

[maryadkins]

If we negate (C), it reads: Some people who are incompetent to practice a particular speciality complete the evaluation programs for that specialty.

What happens if that's true?

The argument doesn't work anymore. There COULD be people who complete their evals and qualified who are nonetheless incompetent.

You have to negate answer choices to know if they are necessary; you can'd evaluate them on broad or extreme language alone. If negating it makes the argument fail, they are still necessary, even if, on their face, they read as broader than the argument.

As for your analysis of (D), I would say that (D) makes the 6-10 years of medical training sufficient BY ITSELF, which doesn't have to be true. Good point on (E).

[Mab6q]

If we negate (C), it reads: Some people who are incompetent to practice a particular speciality complete the evaluation programs for that specialty.

What happens if that's true?

The argument doesn't work anymore. There COULD be people who complete their evals and qualified who are nonetheless incompetent.

You have to negate answer choices to know if they are necessary; you can'd evaluate them on broad or extreme language alone. If negating it makes the argument fail, they are still necessary, even if, on their face, they read as broader than the argument.

As for your analysis of (D), I would say that (D) makes the 6-10 years of medical training sufficient BY ITSELF, which doesn't have to be true. Good point on (E).

But would be D be incorrect because of "usually", as some of the posters above indicated. I disagree with them because if usually falls within all, so if all is necessary then so is usually. I think the proper reason for eliminating D is, as you stated, that it makes the medical training the sufficient, which is not necessary.

[tw4jp]

I am still very confused by C. Negate C = someone incompetent to practice a particular specialty completes the evaluation program for that specialty. What if this is true in another specialty like law training but not in medical training, which means it could be true in some specialty but not in medical training.... I don't think the negation wreck the argument. C sounds like a board sufficient assumption to me.

[ohthatpatrick]

I actually agree with you that this answer choice seems poorly written.

I do want to clarify, for your thinking on future questions, that a negated correct answer doesn’t have to REFUTE the conclusion. It’s totally possible that the conclusion still COULD be true.

It really just has to weaken the argument (usually pretty badly).

Here, we could say that (C)’s negation weakens somewhat. It certainly introduces doubt that these recognized specialists might have completed their evaluation without actually having competence.

But I agree that the answer choice is written too broadly to satisfy my sense of “necessity”. The author DOES need to assume strong ideas, since her conclusion is a certain, sweeping universal. But it’s only a universal about all recognized MEDICAL specialists, so the author should not be accused of needing to assume that this competence-guarantee holds across other specialty evaluation boards.

Ultimately, this is a badly written question, in my opinion, but in LSAT’s mind it only becomes a “faulty” question if high scorers can’t find the intended correct answer. (If you’ve ever seen “Item Removed from Scoring” in LR or RC, it’s supposedly because when they got back their data on how the question performed, an insufficient percentage of high scorers gathered around the credited response)