What helped me see the irrelevance of (C) is to recognize what's already accounted for by the referential phrase "THIS RELATIONSHIP".

What relationship? Eating curries regularly and scoring higher on cognitive function tests.

We know that THIS RELATIONSHIP is strongest for the elderly Singapore residents. To expand that out, it means, elderly Singapore residents of Indian ethnicity eat curries MOST regularly and they received the HIGHEST scores on cognitive function tests (this is a simplification but it works...the real thing should be for every unit of increase in curries, the score increase is higher)

So we already know that these elderly Singapore residents of Indian ethnicity eat curries regularly.

(C) comes in to say that "you know what, most Indian Singaporeans eat curries regularly" - but we don't care about other Indian Singaporeans who are infants/children/teenagers/middle age adults/etc. Because our sample is ELDERLY people. So we only care about ELDERLY people.

Try to think of the two-layered argument this way.

Mr. Klemke: My clients disagree with me politically. They're biased, so their complaints don't count. I didn't badly treat my clients (="The complaints lodged against the roofing company are unfounded")

Author: Well, Klemke, your political disagreement with your clients doesn't prevent you from badly treating them. You could have badly treated them because of that! So you badly treated them (="The complaints are not unfounded" = “The complaints are founded")

But the author's reasoning is terrible! Klemke says "political disagreement --> no bad treatment". The author simply attacked the link - the reasoning - between political disagreement and lack of bad treatment (by saying that disagreeing politically might very well be a reason for bad treatment). The author simply showed that there's the POSSIBILITY of bad treatment because of political disagreement. This doesn't amount to ESTABLISHING the claim that Klemke DID badly treat the clients.

Note that "unfounded" technically means "not based on facts or evidence". Both Klemke's and author's arguments are terrible because they're not dealing with the actual basis for whether the bad treatment happened or not: where is the roof, who worked on that project, what tasks did the crew perform, how is the quality, etc. They're trying to assess the roofing project based on the service provider's and the service purchaser's political disagreement?! That's crazy.

To your first question, yes! (B) would have been correct if it said "at least some" instead of "almost everyone".

To your second question, also yes. In NA questions that have two or more assumptions, the correct AC only needs to be correct and doesn't have to be complete. The reason why we're asked to supply a NA to the argument in stimulus for it to work is it's a flawed argument. An argument can be flawed in multiple ways. It can have more than one hole for you to plug. It's like Strengthen/Weaken questions, where you can potentially have more than one avenue of attack. A correct answer in Strengthen/Weaken doesn't have to strengthen ALL the weak links or attack ALL the weak links. It just have to pick one hole in logic, and either patch it or attack it. Similarly, for NA, it's okay for an answer choice to not plug each and every hole in the logic.

Hey there, I don't think (E) is saying what you think it is saying. You suggested that "E basically says books that probably won’t sell well would more likely not go to independent stores. In other words, books that do end up in megastores already are more likely to sell better", but that's not what (E) is saying. What appears in the feature section of each bookstore (for example, "Top 10 from March" "Staff Recommendation") is NOT the same as what's in a bookstore's inventory. (E) is saying independent stores and megastores choose to highlight different books in their feature section.

Good point! Another source of support for (D), though slightly weaker than the direct support from the last paragraph ("a fair accounting of the interests of other affected parties represents an increase in risk to creditors, since they are likely to recover less in the event of bankruptcy"), comes from paragraph 1. "...make the largest possible asset pool available for settling creditors' preexisting contractually secured claims--something that is usually precluded by allowing companies to stay in business". That means, companies that reorganize are not going to make the largest asset pool available for repaying debts, thus casting doubt on the claim in (D) that reorganized companies will ultimately discharge a greater portion of their contractual debts.

Hi there, I believe it's your first suggestion, that (A) says the research on confession testimony points out a problem with the author's analysis. Paragraph 4 as a whole serves as a premise. A premise by definition is meant to support the conclusion and cannot hurt the conclusion.

Hi there, I believe (C) is distorting Sibley's words and taking them to the extreme. Remember, Sibley is a splitter. He is in favor of the specification, not reducing the total number of species, when it comes to classifying species. So in JY's words, (C) is wrong based on this low res understanding.

To go higher res, Sibley is simply partially acknowledging the reasonableness of the critic's view, namely it's not practically possible to go to the very end of specification. There needs to be a limit on the number of species since we can't manage an infinite number of species or give an endless number of new names for every genetic difference we spot. But that's different from saying that the "goal" is to "simplify" so as to "reduce the total number of species."

You were right about the last part - "presented critically" does refer to the newspaper's skepticism toward Mr. Hanlon's claim.

But your way to represent the conditional logic chain seems off. "Extraordinary claim" is not a sufficient condition here. The "extraordinary claim" part of (A) is simply to link up this AC to the stimulus, because the stimulus refers to Mr. Hanlon's claim as "admittedly extraordinary". The real conditional logic doesn't start until after the comma:

backed by evidence of an extraordinarily high standards → should not be presented uncritically (which is, should be presented critically)

I think theDMF3K is right about the reading of "mere" in answer choice (D). "The mere presence of an orderly system of government in a society" means there's ONLY an orderly system of government in a society, and nothing else. So there's no critical thinking, and there's no adequate protection against political demagogues, since critical thinking is the one and only adequate protection.

Be careful about assuming any connection between an orderly system of government and critical thinking. We don't know there's any connection. We have to take the stimulus as true and only work with the stimulus. The stimulus doesn't mention an orderly system of government, let alone any connection between an orderly system of government and critical thinking.

It's such a word game they're playing! What the stimulus really intends to say is that, the group of patients treated by a general practitioner and the group of patients treated by a specialist both saw 31% / 50% major improvement. But LSAT writers chose to disguise this simple fact by using confusing language such as "regardless of", making us think that getting treatment from general practitioner or specialist is a non-factor, and making conclusion seem ostensibly reasonable. But if you think about it, "regardless of" just means "without taking into account". But what if you DO take it into account? What if you do consider the deeper self-selection effect related to general practitioner vs. specialist? That's where the flaw comes in.

Because the large underground deposit is the ultimate source that supplies both the ancient gold mine and nearby riverbeds. You're right that we are actually not 100% certain that the gold from nearby riverbeds was the gold that was on the artifact. But it could be. That's good enough to weaken the argument.

I think you might have flipped it around! A large amount of vegetation is the result of rainfall, not droughts.

Think of "taps into" as in "makes use of." The large underground deposit is the supplier that provides gold to the ancient mine and nearby riverbeds. So the gold from the ancient mine has the same trace elements as the gold from nearby riverbeds!

The physical proximity has no bearing on the source of material of which the artifacts are made. The artifacts can be close to the ancient mine and made of something not from the mine. The artifacts can be far away from the mine and still be made of gold from the mine.

These two concepts are essentially two sides of a coin. Less divergence = greater convergence.

You correctly identified the puzzle as the INITIAL question/paradox. The puzzle resides in lines 1-10, which is only the opening of P1. The rest of P1 is the authors countering the initial wrong conception that cooking didn't cause any changes in human digestive anatomy.

Lines 10-16: Humans can't really go back to raw food. We're constrained to eating foods that are easily digestible and chewable. If cooking didn't cause any changes in human digestive anatomy, you would think we can easily switch back, since that's where we came from. But we can't. So this is the first countering point.

Lines 16-25: The authors make the second countering point: the common assumption that cooking is too recent to impact human digestive anatomy is wrong. Cooking actually goes way back.

Lines 25-27: The authors make it explicit that they challenge the old thinking. "We suggest" is a key phrase. The main point is that "No, you guys are wrong. Cooking actually led to changes in human digestive anatomy. That's why we are unable to survive on raw-food diets in the wild anymore!"

All that is to say, the authors go beyond simply "describing a scientific puzzle". The puzzle is just a way to lead into the real discussion about the authors' own point. The authors' point is "You are wrong, I'm right."

The benchmark is 250,000 years in line 21. If humans can biologically adapt to drinking the milk of domesticated animals in 5,000 years, then they sure can biologically adapt to cooking (ie, cooking could have had an impact on biological evolution) since cooking presumably started 250,000 years ago.

Hope it's not too late! In the last paragraph, the author proposed an alternative hypothesis to explain the difference between human digestive anatomy and that of other apes. Previously people thought it's because of a high raw-meat diet. But the author thinks it's because of cooking.

The author didn't say conclusively which one is the ultimate winner. Therefore the last sentence suggests further testing.

Same question! #help

I agree with neversaynotopanda. We should not conflate the proportion of people who have a particular gene that get herniated disks with the proportion of people who have herniated disks that have a particular gene. They sound similar but are different concepts.

e.g. 99% of dogs are cute. But not 99% of all cute things are dogs.

So the reason why (B) is wrong is not really because of the seemingly small 2% number. It's wrong because we don't know the proportion of people who would get herniated disks because of the particular gene IN THE GENERAL POPULATION. If only 0.1% of people with the particular gene have herniated disks, then 2% can be a strengthener.

Yes, it's reasonable to assume the level of bat aggressiveness = the likelihood to bite people. This is exactly what (B) is getting at. (B) is also trying to suggest that less mobile = more likely to stay in the building where people live/work.

Yes, (B) is too extreme. Try negating (B). Even if coffee has other health benefits, it doesn't weaken the idea that tea boosts immune system defenses.

Would it be fair to say that conditional logic can indicate association/correlation, but not causation? #help (Added by Admin)

Actually, it won't. Rock music is a sub-group of music produced in the form of LP (I believe). So whether only rock LPs had innovative album covers or other sub-groups of LPs also had innovative album covers doesn't matter. The only thing we care about is that rock LPs from the 1960s and 1970s did feature innovative visual art, and the emergence of digital music eliminated this last attractive thing about rock music. The result is that, as the conclusion claims, rock music has nothing going for it.

This question is more helpfully understood as a number vs. % question (or frequency vs. likelihood). Just because there are more small observational studies that have dramatic findings than big randomized trials (which is talking about the number) doesn't mean that there is a greater proportion of small studies that have dramatic findings than big trials (which is talking about the %). It could be the case there are 10 million small studies and only 1% of them are dramatic. Since there are so many of dramatic small studies to begin with, the newspapers can easily draw more of them. Hope it helps!