Strengthen with Sufficient Premise Questions - - Question 24
In the past decade, a decreasing percentage of money spent on treating disease X went to pay for standard methods of ...
Julie-VJuly 22, 2019
Choice (D)
Hi LSAT Max,
I read the explanation for choice (E) and see why it's the correct answer. I chose choice (D) and was wondering if someone could break it down for me and explain why it doesn't strengthen or guarantee the conclusion. Thanks!
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This is a justify question, meaning we are looking for a statement that, if taken as true, is sufficient to ensure that the conclusion follows logically.
The argument states that a decreasing percentage of money spent on treating X went to pay for standard methods of treatment, that are known to be effective. An increasing percentage is being spent on nonstandard treatments, that turned out to be ineffective. Therefore, less money is being spent now on effective treatments than was spent ten years ago.
Notice how the passage goes from using percentage in the premise to absolute numbers in the conclusion. This is the gap we need to fill for the argument to make sense. To illustrate why this is the case, let's say in year 1 we spent $1000 overall:
$900 on standard methods or 90% $100 on nonstandard methods or 10%
In a year 10 we spent $2000 overall:
$1600 on standard methods or 80% $400 on nonstandard methods or 20%
The premise still holds true, we ended up spending increased percentage on nonstandard methods and decreased percentage on standard methods, but the conclusion makes no sense. The conclusion only holds true if the total amount of money spent slowly declined during the past decade, and that's what (E) tells us.
(D) only tells us that the proportion of the expenditures that accounted for nonstandard treatments, whereas the conclusion concerns the comparative spending on standard treatments today versus a decade ago. That is why it is irrelevant to the conclusion.
