Q9 - Two months ago a major

[peg_city]

I understand why A is right however, why is B wrong?

'A much greater proportion of African-hatched pythons have it'

B) more susceptible - ie more likely to get it? I Googled susceptible and the definition is 'Likely to be affected.' So B is 'more likely to be affected by liver disease.' What am I missing?

[elizabeth.r.casanova]

I am going to attempt to explain why B is incorrect - I apologize in advance if it is not the most sophisticated explanation

(B) This answer choice could be true but cannot not be properly inferred - we aren't given enough information to infer anything about susceptibility.

We know that many (potentially 1-49%) African born pythons get the liver disease, but what about the uninfected African pythons? Also, what about both the infected and uninfected North American born pythons? Yes, we are told that a few N. Am pythons RECENTLY hatched have the disease, but is this representative of the total # of N. Am pythons with the disease?

Here's a hypothetical situation to account for the "much greater proportion of African hatched pythons with the disease" while making the absolute # of infected N. Am pythons larger:

Total N. American born pythons: 100,000
% Have disease: 5%
# w/ disease: 5,000

Total African born pythons: 1,000
% with disease: 25%
# with disease = 250

Now, let's say 500 (400 uninfected and 100 infected) of the 1,000 African born pythons were on the major shipment that arrived to N. America 2 months ago. Given the info in the stimulus, can we really infer that the uninfected African born pythons now living in America are more likely to get liver disease than the unaffected N. Am pythons? No, they could quite possibly have identical susceptibility now that they are in the same location.

[peg_city]

B says hatched however. It doesn't say Pythons living in NA/Africa it says Pythons hatched in NA/Africa.

I really must be missing something

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

B) more susceptible - ie more likely to get it? I Googled susceptible and the definition is 'Likely to be affected.' So B is 'more likely to be affected by liver disease.' What am I missing?

You know the issue with answer choice (B) but you just need to see that word - susceptible - from the intended perspective. The word susceptible implies not just the likelihood of a python contracting the liver disease but instead refers to the likelihood that an exposed python would contract the disease. The issue is that potentially all pythons have the same susceptibility to the liver disease but that the ones in Africa are more likely to be exposed to the liver disease.

In a way answer choice (B) seeks to explain the higher proportion of hatched African pythons who have the liver disease. But we don't know why the African pythons have a higher infection rate. It could be that they're more susceptible but it also could be that they're simply more exposed to the disease in Africa.

Answer choice (A) can be inferred from combining the information that all infected pythons will die within six months of contracting the disease and that some pythons hatched in North America have the disease.

(B) attributes an unsupported explanation for the witnessed phenomenon.
(C) is not necessarily true. The python may not have contracted the disease until months after hatching.
(D) attributes another unsupported phenomenon for a different observed phenomenon (the cheap prices).
(E) is never discussed.

Does that answer your question?

[kelseyjschutte]

I debated between A and B on this question for a long time and eventually chose B.

I chose it because in the argument it says that "all pythons die within 6 months of contracting the disease." From this I did not think we could imply that they contract the disease immediately from birth. What if it takes a few months for them to contract the disease?

If this is the case, then we cannot say that they will die within six months.
I now see in hindsight that the qualifier "some" in (A) leaves open the possibility that they may/may not contract it immediately upon birth, but this really bothered me.

So I guess my question is, is it okay to assume that they contract the disease immediately upon birth?

[sumukh09]

I debated between A and B on this question for a long time and eventually chose B.

I chose it because in the argument it says that "all pythons die within 6 months of contracting the disease." From this I did not think we could imply that they contract the disease immediately from birth. What if it takes a few months for them to contract the disease?

If this is the case, then we cannot say that they will die within six months.
I now see in hindsight that the qualifier "some" in (A) leaves open the possibility that they may/may not contract it immediately upon birth, but this really bothered me.

So I guess my question is, is it okay to assume that they contract the disease immediately upon birth?

The stim says many that hatch are afflicted with the disease. I would say there's no problem with assuming that they have the disease immediately upon birth. We're not making much of a leap, if at all, in assuming this. We would be making a leap, however, in assuming that it could take a few months for them to contract the disease since we've been given no information on how long after hatching it takes for them to be afflicted - all we know is that some that hatch are afflicted, so it's safe to say they have the disease immediately upon birth. Hope this helps

[LittleOne325]

Using Q9 as an example for a broader question of LSAT question stems and answer choices:

One difference I noted between "A" and "B" is that B basically just rephrases sentence 2 by saying that African pythons (whether currently "afflicted" or later "susceptible" if exposed) are more likely to be sick. Therefore, whichever way you interpret the terminology, answer B is still not really an inference as much as a rephrasing of a premise. Between the two answer choices, A is the only "inference" so even if B was a perfectly accurate statement, it is disqualified because it doesn’t answer the question stem, which asked for an inference.

Is that an accurate method for approaching Inference questions? In other words, upon seeing an Inference question, can answer choices that are not inferences be immediately eliminated? Sometimes answer choices include rephrased premises or assumptions, and if those can be eliminated simply based on their "type", rather than spending time parsing terminology, it would speed the process of elimination.

Thanks for any feedback; I know this is broader than Q9 but I don’t want to assume all Inference questions work this way without someone else’s opinion. Perhaps it was just a coincidence in this case.

[wl.y]

I am wondering if the wording in B is tricky.

The wording in the question is such as "many pythons hatched in Africa" which means those pythons were hatched with such problem.
And B goes like, the Pythons that hatch in Africa which means the pythons that lay eggs in Africa.
So they are not the same subject.

Just a thought. Wonder if my understanding is correct.

[rhkwk1441]

I am wondering if the wording in B is tricky.

The wording in the question is such as "many pythons hatched in Africa" which means those pythons were hatched with such problem.
And B goes like, the Pythons that hatch in Africa which means the pythons that lay eggs in Africa.
So they are not the same subject.

Just a thought. Wonder if my understanding is correct.

I never noticed that! I agree with you; 'hatched in Africa/NA' and 'Pythons that hatch in Africa/NA' appear to address different subjects. Assuming that they are addressing two different subjects, (B) is definitely ruled out now because we are talking about African/NA-hatched pythons possessing the disease. We can't infer anything about the parents susceptibility to disease looking at that of their offsprings. Maybe the parents are perfectly healthy but their offsprings are not so lucky.

[snoopy]

I am wondering if the wording in B is tricky.

The wording in the question is such as "many pythons hatched in Africa" which means those pythons were hatched with such problem.
And B goes like, the Pythons that hatch in Africa which means the pythons that lay eggs in Africa.
So they are not the same subject.

Just a thought. Wonder if my understanding is correct.

I never noticed that! I agree with you; 'hatched in Africa/NA' and 'Pythons that hatch in Africa/NA' appear to address different subjects. Assuming that they are addressing two different subjects, (B) is definitely ruled out now because we are talking about African/NA-hatched pythons possessing the disease. We can't infer anything about the parents susceptibility to disease looking at that of their offsprings. Maybe the parents are perfectly healthy but their offsprings are not so lucky.

I disagree. They're talking about hatched pythons.

Using Q9 as an example for a broader question of LSAT question stems and answer choices:

One difference I noted between "A" and "B" is that B basically just rephrases sentence 2 by saying that African pythons (whether currently "afflicted" or later "susceptible" if exposed) are more likely to be sick. Therefore, whichever way you interpret the terminology, answer B is still not really an inference as much as a rephrasing of a premise. Between the two answer choices, A is the only "inference" so even if B was a perfectly accurate statement, it is disqualified because it doesn’t answer the question stem, which asked for an inference.

Is that an accurate method for approaching Inference questions? In other words, upon seeing an Inference question, can answer choices that are not inferences be immediately eliminated? Sometimes answer choices include rephrased premises or assumptions, and if those can be eliminated simply based on their "type", rather than spending time parsing terminology, it would speed the process of elimination.

Thanks for any feedback; I know this is broader than Q9 but I don’t want to assume all Inference questions work this way without someone else’s opinion. Perhaps it was just a coincidence in this case.

B does not rephrase the second sentence ("Many pythons hatched in Africa are afflicted...") because B is suggesting that more pythons in Africa are afflicted/susceptible vs. second sentence. B has a comparison; second sentence in the passage does not. Can't infer that MORE in Africa are susceptible (can be afflicted) just because there are more hatched pythons from Africa have the liver disease. Having the disease does not guarantee that they are more susceptible to it.

Don't immediately eliminate rephrased premises/assumptions since, for Inference questions, you want to be as close to the passage as possible.

[abrenza123]

When they say " a few recently hatched pythons in N. America have this disease," are we assuming that they are still alive/not already dead. The question I had about A is that what if all the recently hatched pythons have already progressed enough where the disease is no longer difficult to detect?

[ohthatpatrick]

In that case, you would change the verb tense to
"a few pythons recently hatched in North America HAD this disease".

If someone dies from cancer, we wouldn't refer to them once they're dead as "They have cancer". We'd say "they had cancer".