LSAT 119 – Section 3 – Question 03

LSAT 119 - Section 3 - Question 03

June 2005

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT119 S3 Q03
+LR
Evaluate +Eval
Causal Reasoning +CausR
Sampling +Smpl
A
4%
154
B
1%
157
C
1%
155
D
93%
164
E
0%
154
127
137
146
 +Easier 145.195 +SubsectionEasier

A recent study involved feeding a high-salt diet to a rat colony. A few months after the experiment began, standard tests of the rats’ blood pressure revealed that about 25 percent of the colony had normal, healthy blood pressure, about 70 percent of the colony had high blood pressure, and 5 percent of the colony had extremely high blood pressure. The conclusion from these results is that high-salt diets are linked to high blood pressure in rats.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The author hypothesizes that high-salt diets are linked to high blood pressure in rats. This is due to an experiment showing most rats fed a high-salt diet had high blood pressure after a few months.

Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that the correlation between high-salt diets and high blood pressure constitutes a link. This means the author doesn’t believe the high blood pressure was entirely caused by some third factor. This also means the author believes that the rat colony didn’t have the same proportion of rats with high blood pressure before starting the high-salt diets.

A
How much more salt than is contained in a rat’s normal diet was there in the high-salt diet?
We know these are high-salt diets. We don’t need to know exactly how much less salt a rat’s normal diet contains.
B
Did the high blood pressure have any adverse health effects on those rats that developed it?
We’re not interested in the effects of high blood pressure. We care about the link between high-salt diets and high blood pressure in rats.
C
What percentage of naturally occurring rat colonies feed on high-salt diets?
We don’t care about how common high-salt diets are. We care about the link between those diets and high blood pressure.
D
How many rats in the colony studied had abnormally high blood pressure before the study began?
If the same proportions of rats had high blood pressure before the high-salt diet versus after the high-salt diet, then the link between such diets and high blood pressure is greatly weakened. If not, then high-salt diets would seem to be linked with high blood pressure.
E
Have other species of rodents been used in experiments of the same kind?
We’re not interested in other rodents. We’re only concerned with the link between high-salt diets and high blood pressure in rats.

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LSAT PrepTest 119 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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