June 2013 LSAT Section 1 Question 21

Essayist: Winners of a Nobel prize for science, who are typically professional scientists, have all made significant ...

MikeGreen on September 2, 2021

Answer Choice C

The stimulus says that "amateur scientists have also provided many significant contributions." However, it never mentions that they have provided many significant contributions TO SCIENCE. I know that this seems to be implied, but I also know that we should avoid adding anything to LSAT stimuli. Is there a clear tip on when to imply and when not to?

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MikeGreen on September 22, 2021

Still waiting on a response, please.

kaiplanet on November 12, 2021

I need help here as well

Jay-Etter on January 25, 2022

Hi @Mikegreen and @kaiplanet,
You're right to be cautious about implications for the LSAT. Remember, however, that there's a difference between something being implied by everything else the stimulus has told you, and making unjustified assumptions that aren't supported by anything in the stimulus.

Here, we are talking about making contributions to science. Then, we say that ameuteur scientists have also provided many significant contributions. The "to science" here is just implied by the basic sentence structure, as well as by the subject matter.

Take another example. If I say, "My friend is an excellent tennis player, and I'm pretty good as well", I didn't say what specifically I'm good at, but clearly I'm talking about tennis. That's what's going on here.

The kind of assumptions we want to avoid are those not justified by the stimulus. For example, we wouldn't like an answer option that said "some amateur scientists have made significant contributions to physics" because even though physics is a part of science that would be a big jump that is unjustified by the stimulus. Hope this helps, feel free to follow up.