PT68.S2.Q10 - people who are allergic to cats

Peter

http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-68-section-2-question-10/
My interpretation of the stimulus is that people who are allergic to cats react to certain proteins within the cat's skin and saliva though which particular proteins vary between people. Every cat is capable of causing some sort of allergic reaction in someone though a particular cat may cause a reaction in some but not others. I disliked all of the answers and ended up choosing (B) because it was the one I found the hardest to refute.

Could someone explain why it's (C)? I feel that the stimulus suggests it's possible all cats secrete the same proteins and that it's the allergy sufferers that vary in which protein they react thereby directly refuting (C). It's supported by the clause "...which particular proteins are responsible, however, varies from allergy sufferer to allergy sufferer..."

Peter

anyone?

SoCal Japorean

I guess I'll take a crack at it Peter:

Most Strongly Supported Question Stem:

Stim says: Cat -> Allergens in their skin and Saliva + spread it everywhere
Cat -> capable of invoking allergic reaction
Cat -> common to cause an allergic reaction in some, but not all

Since you didn't like any of the answer choices, I will skip explaining why is not supported.

C) is supported by the third premise.

C) says Cats <-S-> Not Identical Allergens

This is supported by: Although it is common for a given cat to cause an allergic reaction in some - but not all - people who are allergic to cats.

Granted that it is a tricky question and it wasn't written very clearly.

Let me know if this helps and if you need me to go further in detail.

Peter

Thanks for the reply! Could you elaborate a little more? I interpreted the clause that supported (C) as rather saying that the people who are allergic to cats aren't allergic to the same proteins and therefore a cat may or may not cause an allergic reaction. I find (C) possible and not necessarily true.

Maybe the root of the issue is that I interpreted the question stem "most strongly supported by the information above" as "must be true".

jrkovals

on Most strongly supported you have to ease up a little bit. Look at the stimulus. People who are allergic to cats are allergic to certain proteins in animal's skin secretions and saliva. The next idea should be a different sentence but its poorly written. The next idea: (paraphrased) the particular proteins that are responsible (for the allergic reaction) vary from allergy suffer to allergy sufferer. Every cat can spread saliva and secretions. Every cat can provoke an allergic reaction. It is common common for cats to cause allergic reaction in certain people and not in others.

This directly supports that cats might vary in the proteins in their secretions that are giving rise to varying allergic reactions. That is not to say no cat can elicit an allergic reaction in every allergy sufferer. To get this you would need a sentence like "every allergy sufferer isn't allergic to at least one cat." This is not stipulated.

SoCal Japorean

From my experience, Most strongly supported questions do not necessarily have to be true under all circumstances. Usually you will have to gauge the pulse of the argument and go with the answer that is in line with the general thrust of the passage.

Let me go over the other answer choices with commentary, and then maybe it will help you with these types of questions. I am surprised that you got all the way to prep test #68 without really having a problem with these questions. I've had a Required Assumption question where the correct answer choice didn't necessarily have to be required for the argument to flow; but as you practice, you learn to feel more what the test writers are testing you on and you become more able to distinguish right from wrong where none of the answer really peaks your fancy.

A) Any particular individual will be allergic to some breeds of cat but not to others.

They switched cats and allergic people, trying to catch people off guard. What is supported is that any particular cat will be capable of provoking an allergic reaction.

CAT --> Capable of causing an allergic reaction in all type of allergy sufferers.

I suppose that this is the most attractive wrong answer choice. The Stimulus says: Although it is common for a given cat can cause an allergic reaction in some, but not all types of allergy sufferers. I guess people, when choosing this answer choice interpret that statement to mean that "There can be at least 1 cat that is capable to provoke an allergic reaction in everyone".

There is a distinction to be made between contradicting the stimulus and being supported by the stimulus. The answer choice B does not contradict the stimulus. It is perfectly possible for both answer choice B and the stimulus can be true. It doesn't mean that is the impression that the author wanted to make while writing the stimulus.

I'll give you an example. Let's say the Stimulus says something like:

I've overhead a Japorean Pre-law student say that modern science has taught us that many things are theoretically possible that were thought to be impossible before. The Japorean said that while before it was commonly thought that if you put a lump of coal in the fire, that it must surely burn; but now it is known that there is a small but very real chance that a perfectly burnable piece of coal will not burn when put into the fire.

A very attractive wrong answer choice would be something like:

There exists at least one Japorean that believes that there exists a piece of coal that will not burn when you throw it into the fire.

Just because someone believes that there is a very small chance that something could be, doesn't mean that they believe that they believe that it exists. I don't believe that unicorns can't exist, I believe that unicorns have the possibility to exist; but it doesn't mean that I believe that unicorns do exist. It's a form of over inference.

Another trap answer choice for these types of questions is when the stim says that "some are not" and the answer choice states that there is support that "some are". For example: Some Japoreans don't drink Diet Pepsi. This does not mean that Some Japoreans do drink Diet Pepsi.

A trickier form of this error is. "Some cats that I've seen are black cats."
A very attractive wrong answer choice would be, "Not all the cats that this person has seen are black."
It is possible that all the cats this person have seen are black and saying that some cats that this person has seen are black would not contradict the statement.

I was going to do the other answer choice explanations, but the previous one took much longer than I expected it to take. Let me know if this helps and if you have any additional specific questions about it. Since I'm done with my monologue, Time to Feed the Machine.

Peter

Thanks for all the detailed responses. What got me on this problem was Powerscore LR bible states "most strongly supports" as a way the author words a "must be true" question stem. This really restricted my interpretations of the answer choices. I definitely agree that the stimulus does not support (B) but I felt that (C) was refutable with evidence from the stimulus and therefore picked (B) over (C).

SoCal Japorean

I guess MSS questions "must be true" in the sense that they "must not be false"; but it also has to be supported.

Shrilaraune

Hey there,
I know this is a super old request, but I figure I'd put in my two cents for future generations to find.

I actually went with A when I took this test timed. At the time I was between A and C. I went with A because it seemed to me that based on the premises it was possible for all cats to secrete the same proteins and for allergic reactions to depend on what the person was actually allergic to. The phrase the OP mentioned, "which particular proteins are responsible, however, varies from allergy sufferer to allergy sufferer," seemed to support this for me.

When I went back over this question (this AM) I realized that the first sentence is conditional. The possible worlds this stimulus is discussing are specifically those within which a person is allergic to cats. And so A is too broad.

B, for this reason, is also too broad. "All types of allergy sufferers"? So like, people with Celiac too? On top of that B only says that it is common for a cat to cause a reaction in some but not others but that all cats are capable of causing reactions. From that it follows that there is a known universe somewhere where in a cat can cause allergic reactions in everyone allergic to cats.

D is not supported anywhere because we never discuss types of reactions

E is unsupported because the stimulus seems to directly contradict it. Would we know that responsible proteins vary for sufferer to sufferer if it was impossible to predict or test for?

Finally C, the correct answer--which I still didn't get right on Blind Review. I could not for the life of me find anything in the stimulus that supported this statement. And while timed, if I had eliminated all the other answer choices, I would just go with what's left, I still wanted to figure out why this statement was supported. I mean I was pretty annoyed by this point. Enter Powerscore (they are not a perfect resource, but some of what they say is actually super helpful).

Here's a link to the explanation that finally made it click for me: https://forum.powerscore.com/lsat/viewtopic.php?t=18056

The answer? If all cats secreted the same proteins, all cat allergy sufferers would be allergic to all cats. That seems untrue on the face of it, right? Fortunately, the poster provided an example that made it pretty clear.

Let's say all cats secreted X and Y. If different people were allergic to different proteins, every person allergic to cats would still be allergic to every cat. Because they're allergic to either X or Y. And every cat has both.

Yeah. Absolutely maddening isn't it?