LSAT 158 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q18

LR Question 18 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Records reveal that of physical therapy patients who …

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Your chances of major improvement are the same whether you see a specialist or a GP.

REASONING: A study of physical therapy patients showed this, for both short- and long-term treatment.

ANALYSIS: The study is based purely on whether patients saw major improvement or not. And the results were the same across patients who saw GPs or specialists.

Based on this, they conclude that anyone will have the same chances of major improvements no matter what doctor they see.

But hold up – what if the patients being treated aren’t all the same? Maybe specialists tend to treat more complex injuries, while GPs handle simpler ones. If that’s the case, the overall percentages could look the same even though the doctors are not equally effective for everyone.

So the study does not justify the conclusion that no matter who you are, your chances of improvement are the same regardless of which type of doctor you see.

___________

1. The argument only talks about major improvements, so this distinction isn’t relevant.
2. The issue isn’t treatment length. The pattern was the same for both lengths.
3. We don’t know that the study was based on self-reporting, so we can’t conclude that reporting bias is obscuring the results.
4. Unequal sample sizes don’t necessarily undermine the comparison if the percentages are the same.
5. CORRECT. If each type of doctor is better at different injuries, the overall results could mask real differences in effectiveness. That means it does matter who you see based on what your injuries are.