LSAT 147 | Section 3 | Reading Comprehension: Q14

RC Question 14 Explanation

DISCUSSION: The point of the passage is to argue for less strict ethical standards for how to conduct clinical trials. We should allow researchers to have an opinion about which treatment is best, as long as they recognize that others disagree.

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1. This passage is not an explanation. It’s an argument. The author is arguing we should use clinical equipoise instead of theoretical equipoise.
2. CORRECT. See lines 33-36. This is the conclusion of the argument: we should develop a new, more relaxed standard called clinical equipoise.
3. Nonsense. The author is the one proposing a change! They hope the change will help us do more trials.
   Also, the passage never mentions that equipoise affects our ability to derive information from trials. Instead, equipoise affects whether we can do a trial in the first place.
4. I don’t even know what this answer means. How could it possibly be the main point? What is a “conception embodied in an ethical standard”? That could mean many things.
5. Careful. It is true that the passage “argues for a change”. But the rest of the answer is wrong. Equipoise refers to the attitude researchers have about the effectiveness of different methods. It doesn’t affect how researchers “gather data” in a trial.