June 2007 LSAT Question Explanations June 2007 - Sec 2 - LR...

June 2007 - Sec 2 - LR - Q17

Video Transcript:

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Question 17.
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Hospital Executive: At a recent conference on nonprofit management, several computer
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experts maintained that the most significant threat faced by large institutions such as
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universities and hospitals is unauthorized access to confidential data.
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In light of this testimony, we should make the protection of our clients' confidentiality
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our highest priority.
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Argument or set of facts?
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Clearly, we have an argument here.
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The conclusion is that ?we should make the protection of our client's confidentiality
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our highest priority.?
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How do we know that client confidentiality should be the highest priority at this hospital?
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?At a recent on nonprofit management, several computer experts maintained that the most
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significant threat faced by large institutions such as universities and hospitals is unauthorized
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access to confidential data.?
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So you notice the premise is that several computer experts said that the most significant
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threat is unauthorized access to confidential data.
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Therefore, we should make protection of our clients' confidentiality our highest priority.
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You realize that this is clearly a flawed argument.
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Doesn't make any sense because computer experts, while qualified to talk about computer issues,
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cannot make a broad claim like the one they make here?that the most significant threat
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faced by large institutions is unauthorized access to confidential data.
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Maybe in the field of IT and information technologies that's the most significant threat, but to
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overgeneralize and say that that's the largest threat across the entire board doesn't make
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any sense.
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Computer experts aren't qualified to speak on something of that broad of a nature.
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They could talk about IT and computer related issues, but for the hospital executive to
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take their testimony at this nonprofit management conference to conclude therefore that we should
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make client confidentiality our highest priority obviously makes no sense.
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It's a hospital.
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What about patient health?
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Clearly, doesn't make any sense.
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As we proceed to the question stem, the hospital executive's argument is most vulnerable to
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which one of the following objections?
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?Most vulnerable,? we see another Errors in Reasoning question.
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Looking for the answer choice that describes the logical flaw in this passage, let's take
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a look at (A).
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The argument confuses the causes of a problem with appropriate solutions to that problem.
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You notice that clearly does not apply.
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First, we do not have a cause and effect argument.
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Also there's no confusion of causes for solutions.
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The idea here is computer experts said that this is the largest threat, therefore we should
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make this the highest priority.
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(B), the argument relies on the testimony of experts whose expertise is not shown to
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be sufficiently broad to support their general claim.
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You notice (B) is exactly what we talked about.
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Computer experts do not have the expertise to say the most significant threat faced by
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large institutions is unauthorized access to confidential data.
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It's too broad.
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It's outside of their realm of expertise.
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They could speak on IT and other computer related issues, but to say that this is the
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most significant threat implies that this takes priority over everything else, which
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clearly doesn't make sense, so (B) here would be the correct answer.
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But again, let's just make sure.
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Checking (C), the argument assumes that a correlation between two phenomenon is evidence
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that one is the cause of the other.
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(C), explaining the flaw of mistaking correlation for cause and effect.
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But again, you notice, doesn't apply.
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We don't have a cause and effect argument here so (C) is out.
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(D), the argument draws a general conclusion about a group based on data about an unrepresentative
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sample of that group.
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You notice, what sample?
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We do not draw data here from a sample, so (D) clearly does not apply either.
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(D) would be eliminated which brings us lastly to (E).
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The argument infers that a property belonging to large institutions belongs to all institutions.
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Again, that's explaining the flaw of overgeneralization here, but not what we saw in our passage.
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We were still talking about large institutions such as universities and hospitals.
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Again, this is a hospital executive speaking so we do not over generalize to all institutions,
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we are still talking about large institutions in this case, a hospital.