LSAT 135 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q20

LR Question 20 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Journalist: Newspapers generally report on only those…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Small observational studies are more likely than large controlled studies to have dramatic findings.

REASONING: Newspapers report more frequently on small observational studies. Newspapers tend to report only dramatic findings.

ANALYSIS: This question confuses odds for a group and odds for an individual. This is also called confusing number and rate.

There are more rich people in China than in Switzerland. So does that mean that the average person in China is more likely to be rich than the average Swiss citizen?

No. China is much bigger than Switzerland, and so it has more rich people. But it’s poorer on average.

Maybe there are many more small observational studies than large randomized studies. So small studies could be less dramatic on average, yet produce a greater number of dramatic results.

You’re allowed to use intuition. It might have occurred to you that small studies are easier to do, and so there are more of them. The LSAT expects you to use this kind of insight to form hypotheses.

___________

1. The author never said that newspapers were wrong to report dramatic findings.
2. The author didn’t say that drama always meant a study was unscientific. They just said that large studies have stronger evidence on average.
3. This answer is pure nonsense, so I don’t know how to explain why it is wrong. There simply were no two ‘similar claims’ about both groups. If something doesn’t happen, it can’t be a flaw. 
4. CORRECT. If small studies are more common, then they could produce more cases of dramatic results even if they are less dramatic on average.
5. Actually, the first sentence rules out this possibility. Newspapers only report on stories that sound dramatic. So the drama comes first.