A survey was recently conducted among ferry passengers on the North Sea. Among the results was this: more of those wh...

lsatstudier1 August 6, 2020

Is it just me or are these bad answer choices?

I know it's about choosing the "best" answer choice, but isn't D flawed just from a survey perspective? The stimulus talks about the number of people w/ seasickness reporting symptoms versus the number of people reporting w/out, but the answer choice isn't talking about frequency, it mentions severity. Basically, the severity could vary wildly but frequency of reported seasickness could remain the same. "Would have been more severe" doesn't mean that it necessarily cured the seasickness, right? Am I being overly nit-picky? Sorry I just don't know how much is the *right* amount of attention to pay to survey design/conclusions.

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shunhe August 7, 2020

Hi @lsatstudier1,

Thanks for the question! Well, (D) says that what weakens the conclusion above is that the seasickness symptoms of the people who took anti-seasickness medication would’ve been more severe if they hadn’t taken the medication. What is the conclusion exactly? It’s that people would be better off not taking the anti-seasickness medications.

Now let’s say you’re right, and the frequency stays the same. And the seasickness isn’t cured. But the symptoms are less severe. Well, then it is true that people are better off taking the medications, right? Because at the very least you’ll have less severe symptoms. So the stuff about frequency doesn’t matter that much, as long as people are “better off” taking the medications, the argument is weakened. And less severe symptoms definitely makes people better off, which is why (D) is the correct answer.

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

lsatstudier1 August 13, 2020

Thank you! This is very helpful.