62.2.16 Tissue biopsies taken

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I am having a pretty hard time explicitly ruling out C on this one. I correctly chose E during the exam, but on a second viewing of this question, C seems attractive. Here is my breakdown:

This is a strengthen question.

Biopsies taken on people who have had throat surgery show that people who snored had a higher probability of having abnormalities in their throat muscles relative to those who didn’t snore. Thus, snoring damages the abnormalities.

What I am looking for: This is a typical causal flaw: what if the throat abnormalities cause snoring? In other words, what if the causation were reversed? What if something else caused snoring and the abnormalities? What if it is a coincidence? We need to deny these cases.

Answer A: Does this do anything? This might actually weaken the argument because you need to assume that people were being truthful. Is someone going to lean towards honesty when talking about snoring? Maybe not.

Answer B: Who cares what the surgery was for? We want to strengthen the idea that the snoring causes the abnormalities.

Answer C: Doesn't this rule out the possibility that age, weight, and health are a potential alternate cause? Wouldn't this strengthen the argument? It obviously doesn't since it isn't the correct answer, but I don't see how it does not.

Answer We don’t care about people who haven’t undergone surgery. Our biopsies deal only with people who have undergone surgery. Plus, this is sort of similar to B. We don’t care about either the intent of the surgery (answer nor the effect of the surgery (this answer choice).

Answer E: This is exactly what I anticipated, so I chose this and moved on.

Link to the video: http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-62-section-2-question-16/

iiiSpoon

The problem with (C) is that, as JY mentions in his explanation, it is very narrow, so it is only applicable to those that are referred to. Age, weight, and health might not cause tissue damage among this defined group of (C), but that does not mean that they cannot cause tissue damage in the general populace, which is what the stimulus is concerned with.

Hope this helps.