September 2007 LSAT Section 3 Question 4

Panelist: Medical research articles cited in popular newspapers or magazines are more likely than other medical rese...

Jade on July 6, 2020

Cause and Error mistake

Hi, I chose answer choice C. The other choices didn't make sense to me. During the office hours, Sam posted this question as a cause and effect and I thought that C most closely aligned. Can someone point out where my line of thinking went wrong? I assumed that the cause: would be publicity received by research and effect: importance of prior research.

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shunhe on July 6, 2020

Hi @Jade,

Thanks for the question! So let’s go over the stimulus real quick. We’re told that medical research articles cited in popular media are more likely than others tom e cited. So, concludes the argument, it seems that medical researchers’ judgment are influenced by publicity as opposed to how important the media is.

Now this is a cause and effect in the following way. The argument thinks it’s the publicity that causes the citations. But it could actually be the fact that it’s good, cool research that causes both the citations and the good publicity.

So now we’re asked to find a flaw in the stimulus. (C) says that the stimulus takes for granted (assumes) that coverage of medical research in the popular press is more concerned with eminence of scientists than with the content of the research. But did the argument actually assume this? Not at all. The author doesn’t say anything about the fame of a particular scientist getting research into a newspaper/magazine. Because the author doesn’t actually do (C), it can’t be a flaw in the argument and is therefore wrong.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.