Q12 - Researcher: A number of studies

[gotomedschool]

This one was still kind of confusing to me but I think that last post cleared it up...

So the premise is that the clients in short term physcotherapy all showed similar levels of improvement.


A) Shows that the study measured client improvement ONLY in terms of immediate symptom relief, failing to take into account other ways that they could have improved. So while it is true that all of the clients in short term physcotherapy might have exhibited immediate symptom relief, those in intense short term physcotherapy showed immediate symptom relief + increased stamina + morale improvement etc.? hence weakening the conclusion that any client improvement is a sign that all physcotherapies help in the same way?

[shirando21]

I really liked your analogy. It proved to me that you had given this some serious thought. What I like about your analogy is that the reasoning behind it is perfectly sound. The researcher could validly question the supposed undermining claim.

However, they tricked you into focusing on the wrong concern. Short-term psychotherapy vs. long-term psychotherapy is not implied by answer choice (A). Answer choice (A) is describing the possibility that there are other kinds of improvement (other than symptom relief) that could result from short-term psychotherapy that the studies failed to measure. In which case, the clients in short-term psychotherapy might not all show similar levels of improvement - and this difference could be the result of some aspect not common to all therapy.

(A) correctly identifies a potential weakness. The chances that the concern addressed in answer choice (A) occurs are unlikely but if it did the conclusion reached would have a serious cloud hanging over it.
(B) is meant to reinforce the perception that the issue is short-term vs. long-term psychotherapy. That is not the issue.
(C) compares psychotherapy with other kinds of treatments. The conclusion does not compare these two terms, so answer choice (C) does not relate a weakness in reaching the conclusion.
(D) is irrelevant. Even if those techniques differed, there could still be a common characteristic amongst all therapists.
(E) is similar to answer choice (D). The fact that there are differences amongst therapists does not undermine the notion that there are common aspects to all therapy.

Matt, there is a type of weaken question about survey/study. one way to weaken the argument is by proving the survey data, study result is biased, untrustworthy.

Does this one fall into this category? Just like PT 37, LR1, Q14.

[timmydoeslsat]

Does this one fall into this category? Just like PT 37, LR1, Q14.

Terrific work. These two questions are similar, so you are exactly right. The study in the argument provided very good grounds for its conclusion. Attacking how the study was performed to obtain the results is an excellent weakener.

[shirando21]

Does this one fall into this category? Just like PT 37, LR1, Q14.

Terrific work. These two questions are similar, so you are exactly right. The study in the argument provided very good grounds for its conclusion. Attacking how the study was performed to obtain the results is an excellent weakener.

Thanks, Timmy. I have to reinforce this type. This is one for the very few weaken questions that I miss now.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Thanks Timmy! And good news shirando21, this sort of issue doesn't come up very often. I just went looking through 100 examples of Weaken questions looking for one or two I could offer as additional examples to practice. While the issue of studies and surveys showed up all the time, there wasn't a single case in that set of 100 questions that matched the same issue.

[nbayar1212]

I just had a thought about AC D that I think is worth sharing:

AC D isn't wrong because it would leave the possibility open that short-term therapies still have some aspect of the therapy in common. I would argue that the presence of the word "dramatically" in the AC makes it a pretty clear weakening AC with respect to the conclusion.

Rather AC D is wrong because it is concerned with "therapists practicing different kinds of psychotherapy" - which is not within the scope of the stimulus. This is because the stimulus is concerned with a specific kind of psychotherapy i.e. short-term, in both the premise and conclusion. AC D, however, makes a claim about the techniques that therapists use when they practice different kinds of psychotherapy. This AC is simply not responsive to the claim about short-term psychotherapies which is why it doesn't weaken the stimulus.

[kyuya]

Premise: studies have suggested that short term psychotherapy show similar levels of improvement regardless of the kind of psychotherapy they receive

Conclusion: Therefore, it must be a common aspect of all psychotherapies .

(A) The correct answer.

If other important kinds of improvement were ignored, then this draws into question the idea that they show "similar levels of improvement" because they perhaps showed similar levels of improvement on an unimportant measure, but on all of the important measures varied drastically. This weakens the argument.

(B) This does nothing. We want to know about short term, but this is talking about long term. Its quite possible that long term is better. But that's not what we're after.

(C) This is consistent with the fact that there may be some aspect related to all psychotherapies that is beneficial in these short term results. Perhaps having someone to talk to is sufficient - and quality of psychotherapy means nothing.

(D) The techniques can vary drastically while simultaneously having a lot in common with one another. Consistent with the stimulus and therefore neutral.

(E) Again this seems pretty irrelevant. Perhaps experience with psychotherapy means nothing at all! Seems to be a random fact about psychotherapists in general.

[hayleychen12]

Still kind of confused by this type of Weaken question.

Form my understanding, the right answer to a Strengthen or Weaken question should be the one the booster/weaken the argument, not the premise or conclusion alone?

But in this question, the right answer is just attacking the premise...... Any help!! This question really makes me feel uneasy, and I'm now doubting all my understanding for Assumption family questions as a whole

[ohthatpatrick]

Your understanding is correct, 98% of the time. But if you do enough LSAT problems, you'll encounter some exceptions that don't seem to fit the typical style.

Specifically, there are a handful of Str/Weak questions that only function in terms of their ability to affect the relevance/trustworthiness of the evidence.

Here, we're not attacking the validity of the premise. It is still true that the study DID report similar benefits. We're just offering more detail about what the study was specifically measuring. In doing so, we realize that the author is overlooking some potentially significant differences between different types of psychotherapy.

Ultimately, this is still about assumptions the author is making in going from her evidence to her conclusion. She assumes that the study was conducted well enough to supply valid results, and she assumes that the results are broad enough in applicability to justify her very broad conclusion.

But I get what you're saying: it's weird to just go after the study and say "it sucked".

Technically, any time we're strengthening/weakening an argument, it's just like strengthening/weakening a lawyer's case.

If you were defending someone in court, you might attack opposing counsel's evidence, saying that it's untrustworthy / saying that its witness does not have expertise concerning the particular subject matter of the trial / etc.

When an argument/case is relying on a study as its lone support, then diminishing the trustworthiness of the study is dealing a severe blow to the case.

To see a similar Weaken question, check out this one about dopamine from test 44.
PT44, S2, Q20

[DPCTE4325]

Your understanding is correct, 98% of the time. But if you do enough LSAT problems, you'll encounter some exceptions that don't seem to fit the typical style.

Specifically, there are a handful of Str/Weak questions that only function in terms of their ability to affect the relevance/trustworthiness of the evidence.

Here, we're not attacking the validity of the premise. It is still true that the study DID report similar benefits. We're just offering more detail about what the study was specifically measuring. In doing so, we realize that the author is overlooking some potentially significant differences between different types of psychotherapy.

Ultimately, this is still about assumptions the author is making in going from her evidence to her conclusion. She assumes that the study was conducted well enough to supply valid results, and she assumes that the results are broad enough in applicability to justify her very broad conclusion.

But I get what you're saying: it's weird to just go after the study and say "it sucked".

Technically, any time we're strengthening/weakening an argument, it's just like strengthening/weakening a lawyer's case.

If you were defending someone in court, you might attack opposing counsel's evidence, saying that it's untrustworthy / saying that its witness does not have expertise concerning the particular subject matter of the trial / etc.

When an argument/case is relying on a study as its lone support, then diminishing the trustworthiness of the study is dealing a severe blow to the case.

To see a similar Weaken question, check out this one about dopamine from test 44.
PT44, S2, Q20

Patrick can you please go further and show us how you'd tackle this question using the anti conclusion method? From your other posts, you state that when using the anti-conclusion method, we have to work around premises with the structure [given that... how can we argue (anti conclusion)]

But I don't think that works for this question? Using this method I landed on D. I tried to argue "short term therapy improvements are NOT due to some shared aspects of all psychotherapy". And answer choice D made the most sense.

Can you show me please. Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

Right, the anti-conclusion mindset isn't useful here because this is one of the 0.1% of questions that just cheapen the value of the premise.

I would have been thinking, when I read this ...
GIVEN THAT everyone had similar improvement, despite different therapies
HOW CAN I SAY what made them better was NOT a common denominator?

I would have to argue that it's possible/plausible/probable that a bunch of different therapies would have similar measures of initial improvement.

Maybe taking to a therapist / being hypnotized / acupuncture / drawing pictures / smelling candles / etc. all lead to about X units of improvement in the short-term.

That would allow me to say, "just because they had similar improvement doesn't mean that the improvement came from a similar causal source".

And, since wordplay is not beyond LSAT, a "similar level of improvement" could be "zero improvement".

In that case, one wouldn't want to draw a conclusion like "any improvement is the result of a common denominator". A more apt conclusion would be, "none of these different methods yields much short term improvement".

So it would take a flexible read to interpret (A) and see that it's damaging to the author's case.

Ultimately, the idea of the anti-conclusion is just the metaphor for the Defense Attorney. The author of these LSAT arguments is prosecuting a case, marshaling evidence in favor of proving the verdict in the conclusion.

The defense doesn't need to prove the opposite of the verdict; she only needs to show that the prosecution hasn't proven his verdict.

Arguing from the point of view of the anti-conclusion is a mindset that helps you feel whether an idea is helpful to the Prosecution, helpful to you the Defense, or irrelevant.

You don't need to think of it as "I must prove a refutation of the conclusion".
Just think, "How do I create some doubt about the case this author is arguing?"

GIVEN:
Mrs. Jackson says she saw Tommy at the scene of the crime. Thus, Tommy committed the crime.

WE EXPECT ANSWERS LIKE:
Even though he was at the scene of the crime, I could still create doubt about whether Tommy committed the crime.

THIS ANSWER WAS LIKE:
Mrs. Jackson has terrible cataracts and wouldn't be able to see someone as far away as Tommy was.

Both of those serve our purposes as the defense attorney, trying to weaken the prosecution's case.

[obobob]

Actually, this one wasn't that mythical premise attacker weaken question, as linzru86 and others subsequently pointed out.

There's only one premise in this argument so it should be pretty simple to test whether the answer choice functions by undermining a premise. Let's take a look.

The premise is that "clients in short-term psychotherapy show similar levels of improvement regardless of the kind of psychotherapy they receive."

Answer choice (A) asserts that the methods by which the studies measured whether clients improved ... failed to address other important kinds of improvement."

Wouldn't that suggest that the clients in short-term psychotherapy might not have all had the same level of improvement? What do you think interestedintacos?

Here, we're not attacking the validity of the premise. It is still true that the study DID report similar benefits. We're just offering more detail about what the study was specifically measuring. In doing so, we realize that the author is overlooking some potentially significant differences between different types of psychotherapy.

Okay, I read all the postings, and I am understanding better about this question. Also, I find @ohthatpatrick's last posting really insightful even though I am not sure if I will be able to take a similarly flexible read to interpret an answer choice to see if that weakens in the future if I face similar questions. Also, still confused about what the answer choice (A) is exactly doing to weaken the argument. So, is this weakening the premise or just breaking the connection between the premise and the conclusion? Or is the answer choice raising another possible explanation from the evidence as something similar to what @ohthatpatrick said in his posting above? Can someone please clarify this?

[ohthatpatrick]

Well, most importantly, the anti-conclusion is a tool / process / mindset for helping us to conjure up objections.

It's not a failsafe way to do every LR problem in the assumption family. For example, I would almost never use the anti-conclusion on a Sufficient Assumption or Principle-Justify question.

The anti-conclusion mindset is the same as "opposing counsel" mindset. You're just thinking, "If I'm the other lawyer, tasked with creating doubt about whether the conclusion is really true, what could I do / say?"

One move defense attorneys have is to undermine the credibility / expertise / relevance of the prosecution's witnesses or evidence.

Let's say the prosecution is saying, "Clearly, Mr. Jones is in good mental health. We administered a mental health test yesterday and he got a perfect score."

If we found out that 100% of people pass this mental health test (maybe it's a two question test that goes "1. Are you mentally healthy? 2. Are you sure?"), then the judge/jury will no longer find Mr. Jones's perfect score to be compelling testimony.

Thus, we've weakened the prosecution's case.

That's all we're thinking when we Weaken or Strengthen by assessing the credibility / expertise / relevance of a piece of evidence.

Another example:
"Mr. Jones is clearly in the same financial position this year as he was last year. After all, his responses to this financial questionnaire are the same as those of last year's identical questionnaire"

If we find out that the financial questionnaire only asks about Wages, but fails to ask about stocks, bonds, capital gain, gambling losses, expenses, etc., then we wouldn't trust this questionnaire to give us a full picture of Mr. Jones's current financial position.

That's all that's happening here with (A).

We could still use the Anti-conclusion here, but try not to get too rigidly affixed towards getting positive evidence in favor of the anti-conclusion.

Weakening an argument is just like weakening the prosecution's case:
- you can do so by producing new evidence of your own that seems to possibility outweigh the existing evidence
or
- you can attack the evidence already presented, and argue that it's not relevant / compelling / trustworthy in some way.

GIVEN THAT
these studies suggest that short-term psych clients show similar levels of improvement regardless of type of therapy

HOW COULD WE ARGUE THAT
some improvements in short-term psych are NOT common to all types of therapy

(A) we could say that these studies only measured a narrow range of improvement, so they failed to capture some important forms of improvement that result from certain types of treatment but not from others.

Hope this helps.