June 2007 LSAT Section 2 Question 17

Hospital executive: At a recent conference on nonprofit management, several computer experts maintained that the mos...

Jessica-Berryman on October 29, 2020

How do you know when experts should be questioned?

I eliminated B as an answer choice because I automatically assumed that a panel of computer experts are qualified enough to inform large institutions on the threat of security breaches within their confidential data. Is it out of scope for me to assume that the "data" at risk is computer data? Or is my reasoning/focus flawed elsewhere? Also-- Is there a general test/trick to use that can assist in knowing if the "expert" at hand is not qualified? (For example-- If an expert is mentioned in the stimulus, and one of the answer choices questions their expertise, then that answer choice is more likely to be correct than the others).

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Karen-Norris on April 1, 2021

I also eliminated B. because I thought the various experts were talking about their area of expertise at the conference. I would not have thought that computer experts would attempt to talk about anything but computer-related issues. I certainly would not expect a computer expert to try to advise on how to change a wound dressing for example. But I also thought that let's say the other threat to a hospital's computer system would be intentional sabotage of their patient care systems for example. That could be a bigger threat, unless gaining access to such controls was deemed so difficult that such breach was outside the realm of possibility. Additionally, most most patient care power supply systems at any rate have triple redundancies. Operations overrides is a different issue, but one would hope the controls and settings could only be accessed according to a very, very specific set of protocols. Hmmmm, might make a good subject for a thriller! I chose E because I thought perhaps this was a small or midsized hospital and the large institution argument didn't apply.

Emil-Kunkin on March 22, 2023

I think you both raise a great point, and I would look to the conclusion. The issue isn't that the computer experts don't know security. It's that they don't know hospitals. The experts testimony is likely enough to prove that security should be a concern for hospitals, but does it prove it should be their top concern as the conclusion states? Surely patient care would be a more pressing concern, something that is way outside of the domain expertise of cybersecurity people.