September 1995 LSAT Section 3 Question 12

The retina scanner, a machine that scans the web of tiny blood vessels in the retina, stores information about the pa...

Kweb1016 on April 18, 2021

A vs B

I really struggle picking between A and B. Ultimately, against my better judgement, I picked B because I believe the passage already accounts for answer choice A: the passage says the collected information (about the pattern of blood vessels in the retina) allows it to recognize ANY previous pattern already scanned. To me, this seems directly contradictory to answer choice A, thus answer choice A can be excluded, yes? Again, according to the passage (as I understand it) the scanner being unable to recognize a pattern of blood vessels, even one of a diseased eye, is an impossibility. Where am I getting off track here? Thanks!

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Victoria on May 3, 2021

Hi @Kweb1016,

Happy to help!

We learn from the stimulus that the retina scanner stores information that allows it to recognize any pattern it has previously scanned. We also learn that no two eyes have identical patterns of blood vessels in the retina so the scanner can successfully determine whether it has ever scanned a particular person's retina before.

What is the assumption made by the passage here? That the pattern of blood vessels in an individual's eye stays the same over time.

Answer choice (A) directly addresses this assumption, telling us that diseases of the human eye do not alter the pattern of blood vessels in the retina in a significant way that would hamper the scanner's abilities.

Negating this, if diseases of the human eye altered the pattern of blood vessels in the retina, then the machine may not recognize a person's retina as having been previously scanned, contradicting the stimulus' conclusion.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any further questions.