Reading comp PrepTest 132 · Section 1 · Question 12

Passage

Questions 9-14  .        While courts have long allowed custom-made  . medical illustrations depicting personal injury to be  . presented Remaining source text redacted.
Passage walkthrough
Passage Summary

Topic: Legal


Paragraph 1

  • Paragraph note
    • Debate on the use of custom medical illustrations in court and opponents' view (most injuries are generic, so textbooks are fine)
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Debate - Should custom-made medical illustrations be allowed in personal injury cases?
    • Author's view:
      • Debate and misinformation surrounding the topic (first sentence)
    • Opponents' view:
      • Most injuries are standard, so generic medical textbook illustrations are adequate (second and last sentences)
    • Author's attitude: "misinformation" (first sentence)

Paragraph 2

  • Paragraph note
    • Opponents' second complaint (can improve weak cases) and author's rebuttal (inadmissible without expert testimony)
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Opponents'/some lawyers' view:
      • Custom illustrations can be used to bolster a weak case when experts can't back up client's claim (first through third sentences)
    • Author's view:
      • Even if you can find an illustrator to do this, experts need to testify to accuracy (fourth and last sentences)
    • Author's attitude: "line of complaint" (first sentence); "appear to share" (second sentence); "think that they can" (third sentence); "mistaken" (fourth sentence); "would be inadmissible" (last sentence)

Paragraph 3

  • Paragraph note
    • Opponents' third complaint (can distort accurate illustrations with emphasis and coloration) and author's rebuttal (custom illustrations simplify, unlike textbooks)
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Opponents's view:
      • Emphasis/coloration/etc. can distort details, even if the illustration is technically accurate (first sentence)
    • Author view:
      • Professional illustrators strive for objective accuracy and can simplify images to the necessary information for judges/juries (second through fifth sentences)
    • Comparison, according to the author:
      • Custom illustrations can remove extraneous info that would be in a textbook (third through fifth sentences)
    • Example of complicated textbook illustration, according to the author:
      • Veins/arteries in a bone fracture case (last sentence)
    • Author's attitude: "strive for objective accuracy and avoid devices that have inflammatory potential" (second sentence); "for whose benefit" (fourth sentence); "so as to not confuse the issue" (fifth sentence); "would only get in the way" (last sentence)

Paragraph 4

  • Paragraph note
    • Author on the pros of medical illustrations (especially valuable at translating complex testimony)
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Author's view:
      • Custom medical illustrations provide a visual representation of complex ideas, which is required to help most jurors understand expert testimony (first through last sentences)
    • Author's attitude: "especially valuable" (first sentence); "data whose verbal description would be very complex" (first sentence); "find difficult to translate mentally" (second sentence); "Since, for most people, adequate understanding of physical data depends on thinking at least partly in visual terms, the clearly presented visual stimulation provided by custom-made illustrations can be quite instructive" (last sentence)

Main Point: The complaints against custom-made medical illustrations are based on misinformation and misunderstandings, and since these illustrations can help jurors and judges understand complex facts and testimony, they're especially valuable.

Meta-Structure?

Rebutting Critics: This passage most closely fits the Rebutting Critics Meta-Structure.* In such a passage, the author typically presents criticisms of the subject matter before mounting a defense against those critiques. In this passage, the author brings up a series of complaints against using custom-made medical illustrations in injury cases, only to rebut them one by one. Finally, the author asserts that they believe the use of custom-made medical illustrations are especially valuable in helping judges and jurors understand complex, technical medical testimony.

In a Rebutting Critics Meta-Structure, the main point is generally a summary of the author's defense. In this passage — since the author also makes a case for the use of custom medical illustrations — we should also include a summary of why the author endorses custom medical illustrations. So, we summarized the main point as: "The complaints against custom-made medical illustrations are based on misinformation and misunderstandings, and since these illustrations can help jurors and judges understand complex facts and testimony, they're especially valuable."

*That said, several other Meta-Structures from the Critical Meta-Structures family could apply to this passage. There is considerable overlap between the Correcting the Record, Criticizing a Viewpoint, and Rebutting Critics Meta-Structures, and any one of those could fit with this passage. Typically, when the passage frames the view the author corrects/rebuts as a misunderstanding or oversight, it’s best to consider the passage a Correcting the Record passage. If the view the author corrects/rebuts is framed as a criticism, it’s best to consider the passage a Rebutting Critics passage. If the author otherwise argues another view is wrong, unjustified, or misguided, it’s best to consider the passage a Criticizing a Viewpoint passage. We thought Rebutting Critics is the closest match to this passage — the view the author rebuts is framed as the "opponents'" view, after all — but any one of these Meta-Structure could help you understand the passage's organization and main point.

Last Thoughts?

This passage largely falls into a common pattern of a Rebutting Critics passage, where the author describes and then rebuts each criticism, one by one. But but there's a notable exception — the complaint raised in the first paragraph. There, the author doesn't immediately jump in to say why the opponents of using custom-made medical illustrations are wrong in arguing that generic images would work just as well. However, she does circle back to this when she addresses the complaint in the third paragraph, noting that such generic illustrations from medical textbooks have details that can make it harder for judges and juries to understand them.

This leads us to a larger point — using these structures/patterns to help you simplify the arguments in passages can be very important. Without seeing this pattern, it would be very hard to connect this complaint from the first paragraph with the end of the third. But stripping the passage down makes it a lot easier to see these connections, so be sure to do so when possible. And it's usually possible — it's very rare that an RC passage doesn't have some type of repeated pattern to it!

Question prompt

According to the passage, Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: D

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Question Type

Legal

Strategy Overview

Refer to notes or what you highlighted/underlined to locate where the passage compares medical textbook illustrations and custom-made medical illustrations, and refer to the relevant part of the passage as needed to find that answer choice that must be true

Answer Anticipation

This is another question that asks us to find a specific detail mentioned in the passage, so once again, we'll need to quickly find and review that piece of information, which is paramount. Once we review that part of the passage, we can look through the answer choices to see which one is best supported by what we reviewed.Here, the question asks about the difference between medical textbook illustrations and custom-made medical illustrations. Where did the passage bring that up? Our note for the third paragraph reads, in part, "author's rebuttal (custom illustrations simplify, unlike textbooks)." We could use this as our anticipation — custom-made medical illustrations simplify the images, unlike illustrations from medical textbooks.If we wanted to double-check the passage, we could review the second half of the third paragraph. It will be even easier to locate this detail if we highlighted this comparison, one of the minor Meta-Structures. Looking there, we can see that the passage states that medical textbooks have extensive details required by medical students, while custom-made medical illustrations include "only the information" relevant to the case (P3, S3). So let's look for an answer stating that.

Answer choices

  1. A
    custom-made medical illustrations accurately Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited

    (A) Does this say that custom-made medical illustrations include only the information relevant to the case, while medical textbooks have extensive details?

    Nope. Regardless of the passage, saying that medical textbook illustrations don't accurately represent human anatomy should seem suspect to you. The passage never questions the accuracy of medical textbook illustrations (if anything, in talking about their extensive detail, it says quite the opposite), so this answer is incorrect.

  2. B
    medical textbook illustrations employ Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited

    (B) Does this say that custom-made medical illustrations include only the information relevant to the case, while medical textbooks have extensive details?

    No, so we can cross off (B). Still, this is a little tempting to some test-takers. But it's wrong for a few reasons. First, the passage doesn't talk about coloration in images in medical textbooks. Second, the passage notes that custom-made illustrations "sometimes" don't use color (P3, S2) — not that they must avoid it.

  3. C
    medical textbook illustrations are Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited

    (C) Does this say that custom-made medical illustrations include only the information relevant to the case, while medical textbooks have extensive details?

    No. Let's eliminate (C). Still, this answer can be tempting. However, first, there's no discussion of the objectivity of medical textbook illustrations. Second, the author claims that those who make illustrations for medical cases "strive for objective accuracy" (P2, S2). The author says this to suggest that the custom illustrators are not making subjective illustrations.

  4. D
    medical textbook illustrations are Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D matches the stem

    (D) Does this say that custom-made medical illustrations include only the information relevant to the case, while medical textbooks have extensive details?

    Yes! This answer more or less restates the sentence in the passage that explicitly compares textbook illustrations and those meant for trial, making it the correct answer. We can select it and advance straight to the next question.

  5. E
    medical textbook illustrations are Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited

    (E) Does this say that custom-made medical illustrations include only the information relevant to the case, while medical textbooks have extensive details?

    No. Think through this answer — does it make sense that medical textbook illustrations would be easier for the average person to understand than something made to be shown at trial? Not at all, and that's backed up by the passage, which says the textbook illustrations include information which can "confuse the issue" (P3, S5).

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 1%
  2. B 2%
  3. C 5%
  4. D Credited 92%
  5. E 1%

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