@Aubrey.Raile The author says that since there is no correlation (or more precisely, that in some cases the relationship implied by the correlation doesn't hold), there is no causation. The contrapositive would be: If there is no causation, then there is no correlation..

@CharlizeChen totally agree with you that the explanation brushes over it AND incorrectly interprets "Arthritis sufferers' beliefs about the causes of the pain." I think the reason B is wrong is because the researchers found no correlation between people's perceived pain and weather events; if it were the case that their beliefs affected their assessment of the pain, then this would make it more likely for there to in fact be a correlation, since people would be reporting higher pain when they believe they should be, within some duration after a weather event. (This is putting the issue of differences in time delay discussed in the second to last sentence completely to the side.)

However I do not see my interpretation anywhere else so I could be wrong.

@djlectic I agree but I also think there's the issue of answer B conflicting with the fact that researchers failed to find any correlation between pain intensity and weather. If everyone believed that their pain was more intense following a thunderstorm, then there would be a correlation between pain intensity and weather. This is putting the issue of time delay aside completely. There would perhaps still be no correlation between weather and more objective features of their condition, like say some sort of objective metric of swelling, because it's actually their beliefs about the effects of weather that are causing them to feel pain, not the underlying condition. However, the passage says the study failed to find any correlation between pain intensity and weather.

I understand that only says that their beliefs "may" affect perceived pain, but if the statement were stronger, it would be incompatible with the facts of the passage.

@MaxThompson Wouldn't Answer B actually be incorrect? Imagine that I believed that thunderstorms were causing my pain to intensify, and that this affected my perception of my pain so, despite the reality of my underlying condition, I always felt more pain two days after thunderstorms; then there would be a correlation between thunderstorms and my reported pain intensity (which is what the study measured). But the study reports no correlation.

I just want to note that Kevin's assessment of why answer B is incorrect (in the explanation video) is itself incorrect.

Answer B is wrong because if it were the case that the sufferers' beliefs about the causes of their pain affected their assessment of the intensity of that pain, then the study would have shown a consistency or correlation between the two metrics the study measured -- the weather events and the perceived pain intensity -- but it did not. If Answer B were true, there would be a higher correlation between weather events and perceived pain intensity than between weather events and some other measurement of 'real' pain intensity or some other more objective measurement of the condition, like the severity of swelling. This is a subtle difference, and I got this question wrong in the timed drill before correcting it in blind review.

Kevin's explanation is wrong because he misinterprets the phrase "arthritis sufferers' beliefs about the causes of the pain they feel." He takes this phrase to refer narrowly to which of the weather events the sufferer has selected as his/her believed source of increased pain. However the passage never mentions that sufferers select only a subset of these weather events. The phrase here more reasonably means the entire set of an arthritis sufferers' beliefs about the causes of the pain they feel as described in the passage. When this phrase is interpreted Kevin's way, it is much easier to dismiss answer B.

@RachelSalisbury Additionally, in the explanation video, it says the the issue at hand is whether the museum director obtained the appropriate price for the pieces. But this is never mentioned as the critics' concern. The critics are concerned that the museum has violated its duty as a trustee of art for future generations by selling the pieces AT ALL, regardless of the price at which they are sold. Therefore what's at issue is not whether the sale price was fair, but whether the pieces constitute 'first-rate pieces' which would mean that their sale AT ANY PRICE is a loss to the museum.

Evaluating Option E further: It bases its conclusion {the fact that the price reflects that the pieces are first rate} on facts that could, in the given situation, have resulted from causes other than those presupposed by the argument.

I could see Option E being true if you argue that the high re-sale price of the pieces is caused by something other than the pieces being first-rate; for example, you could say that the pieces are being re-sold at a high value for a reason other than the 'first-rate-ness' of the piece (for example, the pieces could be reselling at a higher value because of the publicity around the controversy of the sale from the museum).

I interpreted Option A completely differently than how it was interpreted (and then rejected) in the explanation.

It concludes that a certain opinion [the opinion held by the critics, that the museum lost a first rate piece] is correct on the grounds that it is held by more people than hold the opposing view.

I interpreted it this way: The conclusion of the passage is that the price at which the piece was resold settles the issue that the critics were correct that the piece was first-rate; the price is the aggregate of the opinion held by everyone participating in the market for these paintings. The passage says that the fact that the art market in general valued the piece at a higher price than it was sold for (i.e., the market found the piece to be 'first-rate') demonstrates that the critics were indeed correct that it was first rate, and as a result, that it's sale was a loss for the museum. The passage is then vulnerable to the criticism that it is not the market that decides what is first rate; this can be restated as "a certain opinion is not necessarily correct based on the fact that the general market reflects that it is correct," which is a restatement of Option A. You could argue that the museum director's experience or skill positions him to have more on an authority on what is first rate, or what is a loss to the museum's collection, than the critics and/or the market.

The explanation video represents Option A as a statement about the number of critics versus the singular museum director. But the actual conclusion is the passage is about the price determined by the market versus the evaluation of the critics/museum director, and this would still be a consensus versus individual(s) argument even if there were only one critic.

Could someone please indicate where I've gone wrong in my reasoning.

The last example is a bit sloppy. It is not correct to include the phrase "is wrong" in the last example as a negative referential just because it negates the former statement. There is a hidden or implied referential in the sentence ("But he is wrong about that.") where "that" is the referential, and it is not a negative referential. The fact that the content of the predicate is such that the author is negating the previous sentence does not make that predicate referential; instead, the referential is inferred.

This becomes clearer if you remove the first referential: "One prominent biologist, Dr. H, hypothesized that the colors function as camouflage. But Dr. H is wrong." There are no words in these sentences serving grammatically as a referential, although you can imply from context that the thing he is wrong about is the hypothesis.