LSAT 137 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q15

LR Question 15 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Doctor: It is wrong for medical researchers to keep…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle

CONCLUSION: Medicals researchers shouldn’t keep their research confidential.

REASONING: Humans might suffer if researchers keep research confidential.

ANALYSIS: You can’t assume any moral principles on the LSAT. Even something as obvious as: ‘it is a bad thing for humans to suffer needlessly’.

Pretend you’re a space alien. You can assume facts are true, such as ‘humans breathe oxygen’. But you can’t assume anything about what is right or wrong.

Many modern principle-justify questions simply ask you to assume the moral principle that already ‘feels’ right.

___________

1. Too narrow. This doesn’t cover behavior that only ‘might’ cause humans to suffer. The stimulus doesn’t say that withholding info always causes suffering.
2. That’s nice. But this is just a conditional statement – it doesn’t tell us anything about the world. It’s like saying ‘if I had a billion dollars, I’d be rich’. That statement doesn’t help pay my electricity bill, and this statement doesn’t justify the stimulus.
3. CORRECT. Here we go. It’s definitely possible that withholding info causes suffering. This principle tells us that it’s wrong to allow that possibility.
4. This is useless. Maybe researchers also have a moral obligation not to share company info. This principle says researchers must obey all obligations.
5. This tells us what would be wrong for a company to withhold information. The stimulus is about what researchers should do.