LSAT 158 – Section 2 – Question 06

LSAT 158 - Section 2 - Question 06

May 2020

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT158 S2 Q06
+LR
Most strongly supported +MSS
Conditional Reasoning +CondR
Quantifier +Quant
A
90%
161
B
1%
147
C
1%
147
D
4%
155
E
4%
152
126
136
146
 +Easier 146.031 +SubsectionMedium

This is a Most Strongly Supported question.

The stimulus provides two different types of information. First, we’re given a correlation, which turns out to be useless. Second, we’re given a logical chain, which is what produces the inference.

The correlation is that darker honey tends to be higher in antioxidants than lighter honey.

The next piece of information, even though it's still in the same sentence, expresses a different relationship. It says that all of the most healthful strains of honey are unusually high in antioxidants. The keyword is “all” which the test writers conveniently hid in the middle of the sentence. If you catch that, you can translate this into an all statement using the conditional arrow. The set of “the most healthful strains of honey” is completely subsumed under the set of “honey that's unusually high in antioxidants”:

most healthful → unusually high in antioxidants

Finally, we learned that there are some strains of honey that come from sage nectar and are among the lightest in color, yet are also among the most healthful. This is a “some relationship,” an overlap in two sets. One of the sets is what we've already talked about: the set of the most healthful strains of honey. The other is the set of honey that comes from sage nectar and is lightest in color.

sage and among lightest ←s→ most healthful

We can chain together this “some statement” and the previous “all statement”:

sage and among lightest ←s→ most healthful → unusually high in antioxidants

This is a commonly repeating valid argument form A ←s→ B → C which produces the valid inference A ←s→ C. Translated back into English, some of the lightest strains of honey produced by bees harvesting sage nectar are unusually high in antioxidants. This is what Correct Answer Choice (A) says. Almost. (A) drops “lightest” but that’s fine. If it’s true that some of the lightest sage honey is X, then it’s also true that some sage honey is X.

Answer Choice (B) says most plants produce nectar that results in light-colored honey. This is unsupported. The information in the stimulus is consistent with most plants producing dark-colored honey or light-colored honey.

Answer Choice (C) says light-colored honey tends to be more healthful than dark honey. This is not supported (or actually, a bit anti-supported). All we know is that darker honey tends to be high in antioxidants. We also know that the most healthful honeys are all unusually high in antioxidants. This weakly suggests that it's the antioxidants that are causally responsible for the healthful effects. If we take that to be true, then (C) is actually anti-supported. But we don’t have to because this is just an MSS question and being unsupported is good enough to eliminate this answer.

Answer Choice (D) says certain strains of honey produced by bees harvesting primarily sage nectar are unusually low in antioxidants. This is unsupported. It’s a tempting answer because we know that sage nectar produces “among the lightest strains of honey” and we also know that there is a general correlation between honey being light and it having less antioxidants. But we also have enough information to infer that sage is an exception to the correlation, because we know that sage-produced light honey is among the most healthful strains of honey and we further know that the entire set of the most healthful strains of honey is subsumed under the set of honey that is unusually high in antioxidants.

Answer Choice (E) says the strain of honey that has the highest antioxidant content is a light-colored honey. This is unsupported. It could be true but it also could be false. We only have information in the stimulus about the set of honey that is among the lightest or among the most healthful or is unusually high in antioxidants. We have no information about the specific strains of honey at any of the extremes of those spectrums.

Dark honey tends to have a higher antioxidant content than light-colored honey, and the most healthful strains of honey are all unusually high in antioxidants. However, certain strains of honey produced by bees harvesting primarily sage nectar are among the most healthful strains of honey, even though they are also among the lightest-colored strains of honey.

Summary
Some strains of honey produced by bees harvesting sage nectar are the lightest strains of honey and the most healthful strains of honey. The most healthful strains of honey are all unusually high in antioxidants. Dark honey tends to have higher antioxidant content than light honey.

Strongly Supported Conclusions
Some strains of honey produced by bees harvesting sage nectar are unusually high in antioxidants.

A
Some strains of honey produced by bees harvesting sage nectar are unusually high in antioxidants.
This answer is strongly supported. We know from the stimulus that some strains that these bees produce are the most healthful strains, and all of the most healthful strains are unusually high in antioxidants.
B
Most plants produce nectar that, when harvested by bees, results in light-colored honey.
This answer is unsupported. We don’t have any information from the stimulus about the type of nectar most plants produce.
C
Light-colored honey tends to be more healthful than dark honey.
This answer is anti-supported. The stimulus tells us that dark honey usually has high antioxidant content than light honey, and all of the most healthful strains are high in antioxidant content.
D
Certain strains of honey produced by bees harvesting primarily sage nectar are unusually low in antioxidants.
This answer is unsupported. We don’t know from the stimulus if there are any strains of hone that are unusually low in antioxidants.
E
The strain of honey that has the highest antioxidant content is a light-colored honey.
This answer is unsupported. We don’t know from the stimulus whether the single strain that has the highest antioxidant content is light in color. We only know that some of the lightest-colored strains are also some with the highest antioxidant content.

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LSAT PrepTest 158 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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