LSAT 126 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q25

LR Question 25 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: A study of 86 patients, all of whom suffered from disease T…

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: Support therapy does not help patients with disease T live longer.

ANALYSIS: Since the deaths were equal after 10 years, this sounds persuasive. But….there were 86 total patients. 82 of them are dead!

Perhaps all of the patients were very old, and it was expected that almost all would die after ten years. Some additional information about what happened before the ten-year mark will help us weaken this conclusion.

___________

1. Four is too small a sample for us to conclude anything. Further, we don’t know how much longer the two patients lived. This answer choice could be useful, if it makes you realize that only a very small percentage of test subjects lived longer than 10 years.
2. This doesn’t tell us whether support group meetings work, particularly for disease T.
3. CORRECT. Two out of at most ten additional years is a significant boost in life expectancy for those who received therapy. This devastates the conclusion.
4. This is very limited, but if anything it tells us that support groups are ineffective.
5. The conclusion is about life expectancy, not how the patients are coping with the disease.

Recap: The question begins with “A study of 86 patients, all of whom suffered from disease T”. It is a Weaken question. Learn how to master LSAT Weaken questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.