LSAT 110 – Section 2 – Question 17

LSAT 110 - Section 2 - Question 17

June 2001

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT110 S2 Q17	+LR	Weaken +Weak Sampling +Smpl Analogy +An	A 82% 168 B 6% 160 C 4% 156 D 6% 158 E 2% 160	145 153 161	+Harder	145.606 +SubsectionMedium

Dietary researcher: A recent study reports that laboratory animals that were fed reduced-calorie diets lived longer than laboratory animals whose caloric intake was not reduced. In response, some doctors are advocating reduced-calorie diets, in the belief that North Americans’ life spans can thereby be extended. However, this conclusion is not supported. Laboratory animals tend to eat much more than animals in their natural habitats, which leads to their having a shorter life expectancy. Restricting their diets merely brings their caloric intake back to natural, optimal levels and reinstates their normal life spans.

Summarize Argument

The researcher concludes the study does not support recommending North Americans eat fewer calories to extend their lives. Why not? Because unnaturally calorific laboratory diets are the reason a reduced-calorie diet increased longevity in the study.

Notable Assumptions

The researcher assumes that North Americans’ diets are more in line with their natural calorie intake than the diets of laboratory animals. Furthermore, she assumes the animals studied had a pre-diet calorie intake typical for laboratory animals.

North Americans, on average, consume a higher number of calories than the optimal number of calories for a human diet.

This challenges the assumption that the laboratory animals’ unnaturally high calorie intake makes them dissimilar from North Americans. If North Americans consume more calories than optimal, then they are similar to laboratory animals in that way, not different.

North Americans with high-fat, low-calorie diets generally have a shorter life expectancy than North Americans with low-fat, low-calorie diets.

This relationship between fat intake and life expectancy does not imply that the study’s findings can be correctly extended to North Americans. The researcher does not say fat intake was examined separately from calorie intake.

Not all scientific results that have important implications for human health are based on studies of laboratory animals.

This states that some studies with implications for human health do not involve laboratory animals, not that studies of laboratory animals must or usually have implications for human health.

Some North Americans who follow reduced-calorie diets are long-lived.

This does not say North Americans who eat fewer calories are tend to live longer—it’s possible North Americans on normal diets are more likely to be long-lived than those on reduced-calorie diets.

There is a strong correlation between diet and longevity in some species of animals.

This does not specify which type of diet increases longevity or identify the species in question. This may support doctors making some dietary recommendation to increase longevity, but not the one described on the basis of the study.

LSAT 110 – Section 2 – Question 17

LSAT 110 - Section 2 - Question 17

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LSAT PrepTest 110 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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