The greater the number of people who regularly use a product, the grea

Question

The greater the number of people who regularly use a product, the greater the number whose health is potentially at risk due to that product. More people regularly use household maintenance products such as cleaning agents and lawn chemicals than regularly use prescription medicines. Therefore, it is even more important for such household products to be carefully tested to ensure their safety than it is for prescription medicines to be so tested.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify drawing the conclusion in the argument above?

(A) Whether or not it is important for a given product to be carefully tested depends mainly on the number of people who regularly use that product.

(B) It is very important for any product that is regularly used by a large number of people to be carefully tested to ensure its safety.

(C) The more people whose health might be at risk from the regular use of a particular product, the more important it is for that product to be carefully tested to ensure its safety.

(D) If one type of medicine must be taken in more frequent doses than another type of medicine, it is more important for the former to be carefully tested than for the latter.

(E) It is generally more important for a medicine than it is for a nonmedical product to be carefully tested to ensure its safety unless more people’s health would be at risk from the nonmedical product than from the medicine.

Bunuel · Accepted Answer

EXPLANATION FROM Fox LSAT

This argument seems to ignore the difference between the  number  of people exposed to risk and the  magnitude  of the risk each person is exposed to. Yes, it’s true, many more people use Windex than use Oxycontin. So you could say that many more people are exposed to the risk of Windex than are exposed to the risk of Oxycontin. But does this mean that Windex is more dangerous than Oxycontin? Hell no. If you lock yourself in an airtight room and hose down the walls, floors, and ceiling with Windex nonstop for 12 hours, you’ll probably get a little dizzy/headachy. If you accidentally take too much Oxycontin, maybe you end up in a coma. If you accidentally take Oxycontin for a little too long, maybe you end up trying to knock over a truck stop pharmacy in Bakersfield to get your fix. The logic here is just stupid.

The question asks us to “justify” the conclusion of the argument. That means we need to switch teams. To strengthen the horrible logic of the argument, my fantasy premise would be something like, “The number of people exposed to a certain substance is the only determinant of how important it is to test the safety of that substance.” I’m not saying I actually believe that: I think it’s stupid. But if we were to accept it as truth (or if we could get a judge to believe it) then we’d prove our case. So that’s my prediction.

A) This is pretty good. It says the importance of testing is “mainly” dependent on the number of people who use the product. I’d like this answer better if it said “only” instead of “mainly” but it’s still pretty good.

B) If this is true, then it proves we should carefully test Windex, but doesn’t necessarily mean we shouldn’t test Oxycontin even more. So I don’t think this is as good as A.

C) Oh, this is even better than A. Answer A said “depends mainly” on the number of people, but didn’t go all the way and actually make it explicit that “more people means more testing.” Don’t assume this is obvious! Nothing is obvious. Answer C covers all the bases, so it’s better than A. It’s also better than our prediction, for this same reason. It’s our answer so far.

D) This is only about one medicine vs. another, which ignores the point of the argument. No way.

E) This would weaken the argument rather than strengthen it.

Our answer is C.

REALMAREZ · Answer

The greater the number of people who regularly use a product, the greater the number whose health is potentially at risk due to that product. More people regularly use household maintenance products such as cleaning agents and lawn chemicals than regularly use prescription medicines. Therefore, it is even more important for such household products to be carefully tested to ensure their safety than it is for prescription medicines to be so tested.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify drawing the conclusion in the argument above?

(A) Whether or not it is important for a given product to be carefully tested depends  mainly  on the number of people who regularly use that product. ---  too strong

(B) It is very important for  any  product that is regularly used by a large number of people to be carefully tested to ensure its safety.---  too strong and this a.c repeats the conclusion
 
(C) The more people whose health might be at risk from the regular use of a particular product, the more important it is for that product to be carefully tested to ensure its safety. ---  CORRECT

(D) If one type of medicine must be taken in more frequent doses than another type of medicine, it is more important for the former to be carefully tested than for the latter.---  out of scope

(E) It is generally more important for a medicine than it is for a nonmedical product to be carefully tested to ensure its safety unless more people’s health would be at risk from the nonmedical product than from the medicine.--- out of scope

ashutosh_73 · Answer

Hi, Please help to understand why option E is wrong.

This stimulus tells us that ''As cleaning products are used by more people than medicines, it is more important to test the safety of cleaning products than to test the safety of medicines''. 
More people consuming cleaning products are at risk than people consuming medicines.
And this is what option E explains. Although E provides 2 situations, it is still along the lines of our conclusion in the stimulus, right?

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

ashutosh_73

This is where LSAT problems tend to be trickier: the use of conditional logic. I'll go over how to interpret E, but keep in mind that you're unlikely to see anything like this on the GMAT.

The term UNLESS basically translates to IF NOT. So "X is true UNLESS y" means "If not Y, then X." Therefore, E is saying "If a nonmedical product does NOT put more people's lives at risk than a medicine, then it is more important to test the medicine carefully." This doesn't tell us anything about the case in the argument, in which the nonmedical product DOES put more people's lives at risk.

Here's a simpler example as a parallel. What if someone says "Unless it's December, I never sing Christmas songs." So what if it IS December? Is this person singing Christmas songs all month long? Are they singing them at all? We don't know. We just know that during the other 11 months of the year, they do NOT sing these songs. So if we hear them singing a Christmas song, we know it is December.

VerbalBot · Answer

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The greater the number of people who regularly use a product, the grea

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