LSAT 131 – Section 2 – Question 01

LSAT 131 - Section 2 - Question 01

December 2009

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT131 S2 Q01	+LR	Strengthen +Streng Causal Reasoning +CausR Sampling +Smpl	A 96% 164 B 1% 154 C 1% 160 D 1% 155 E 1% 158	120 126 138	+Easiest	147.936 +SubsectionMedium

On the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, a researcher examined 35 patients with atypical Parkinson’s disease and compared their eating habits to those of 65 healthy adults. She found that all of the patients with atypical Parkinson’s regularly ate the tropical fruits soursop, custard apple, and pomme cannelle, whereas only 10 of the healthy adults regularly ate these fruits. From this, she concluded that eating these fruits causes atypical Parkinson’s.

Summarize Argument

The researcher concludes that eating soursop, custard apple, and pomme cannelle causes atypical Parkinson’s disease. Her evidence is a study showing that patients with atypical Parkinson’s disease regularly ate these fruits, whereas the majority of healthy adults did not.

Notable Assumptions

Based on a mere correlation, the researcher assumes that eating certain fruits causes atypical Parkinson’s disease. This means she doesn’t think the relationship is reversed (e.g. having atypical Parkinson’s causes one to be prescribed a diet with such fruits).

For many of the atypical Parkinson’s patients, their symptoms stopped getting worse, and in some cases actually abated, when they stopped eating soursop, custard apple, and pomme cannelle.

When the patients stopped eating the fruits, their symptoms stopped deteriorating or actually abated. This strengthens the causal connection between the fruits and atypical Parkinson’s disease.

Of the healthy adults who did not regularly eat soursop, custard apple, and pomme cannelle, most had eaten each of these fruits on at least one occasion.

Eating these fruits on one occasion likely isn’t enough to cause atypical Parkinson’s disease, so we don’t care. Besides, we already know there are healthy adults who do regularly eat these fruits.

In areas other than Guadeloupe, many people who have never eaten soursop, custard apple, and pomme cannelle have contracted atypical Parkinson’s.

The researcher isn’t claiming that eating these fruits is the only way to get atypical Parkinson’s disease. These people presumably contracted the disease some other way (e.g. genetically).

The 10 healthy adults who regularly ate soursop, custard apple, and pomme cannelle ate significantly greater quantities of these fruits, on average, than did the 35 atypical Parkinson’s patients.

This weakens the researcher’s argument. If these fruits cause atypical Parkinson’s disease, then those eating the highest quantities should be most likely to contract the disease. But this tells us those adults actually remained healthy.

Soursop, custard apple, and pomme cannelle contain essential vitamins not contained in any other food that is commonly eaten by residents of Guadeloupe.

We don’t care about vitamins. We care about what causes atypical Parkinson’s disease.

LSAT 131 – Section 2 – Question 01

LSAT 131 - Section 2 - Question 01

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LSAT PrepTest 131 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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