LSAT 155 – Section 2 – Question 15

LSAT 155 - Section 2 - Question 15

November 2019

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT155 S2 Q15
+LR
Weaken +Weak
Critique or Debate +CritDeb
Problem-Analysis +Prob
Causal Reasoning +CausR
A
43%
164
B
28%
156
C
14%
154
D
0%
149
E
14%
159
154
162
171
 +Hardest 145.934 +SubsectionMedium

Few, if any, carbonated beverages contain calcium. Some very popular ones, however, contain significant amounts of caffeine, and consuming caffeine causes people to excrete significantly more calcium than they would otherwise. Interestingly, teenagers who drink large amounts of carbonated beverages containing caffeine tend to suffer more broken bones than those who do not. Calcium deficiency can make bones more brittle, of course, so the higher incidence of broken bones in teenagers who consume carbonated beverages with caffeine is probably due primarily to caffeine consumption.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The author hypothesizes that the correlation observed in teenagers between between broken bones and drinking carbonated beverages with caffeine is due to caffeine consumption. The author supports this hypothesis by the fact that caffeine causes people to excrete a lot of calcium, and calcium deficiency can make bones more brittle.

Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that the main factor causing the correlation observed in teenagers between broken bones and consumption of carbonated beverages is caffeine consumption. The author also assumes that if teenagers who drink carbonated beverages with caffeine have calcium deficiency, that this is mainly due to the beverages rather than some other cause.

A
Teenagers who drink large quantities of carbonated beverages containing caffeine tend to drink smaller quantities of calcium-rich beverages than other teenagers do.
This provides an alternate explanation for the correlation between broken bones and the beverage consumption. If teens who drink the beverage drink less calcium-rich beverages (ex. milk) than other teens, the disparity in calcium-rich beverages could be the primary causal factor.
B
Teenagers engage in the types of activities that carry a high risk of causing broken bones much more often than both older and younger people do.
This compares teenagers vs. older people. We want a comparison between teenagers who drink the caffeine-rich carbonated beverages and teenagers who don’t drink the beverages.
C
Some teenagers have calcium deficiencies even though they do not consume any caffeine.
The author never assumed that calcium deficiency can never be caused by anything else besides caffeine consumption. The author’s theory requires only that caffeine consumption increases the likelihood that a child will have calcium deficiency and broken bones.
D
Some of the less popular carbonated beverages contain even more caffeine than the more popular ones.
The correlation and the conclusion do not make any distinction between different kinds of carbonated beverages with caffeine.
E
The more calcium a person ingests as a regular part of his or her diet, the more calcium that person will tend to excrete.
So, eating more calcium leads to more excretion of calcium. This doesn’t change the fact that eating caffeine causes people to excrete a lot more calcium than they otherwise would.

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LSAT PrepTest 155 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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