PT74.S1.Q18 - medical researcher: a survey of more than 1 million

ToxoplasmosisToxoplasmosis Alum Member
edited September 2016 in Logical Reasoning 233 karma
I am BRing this question and am having a hard time convincing myself why the answer is A. not E. any input would be helpful.

Descriptive Flaw Question:

Scientists found that there is a greater frequency of illness among people who sleep atleast 8 hours per night than there is for people who sleep significantly fewer hours. This shows that mild sleep deprivation isn't unhealthy and probably bolsters your immune system

A. Another factor that contributes to both phenomena - Sure this seems reasonable maybe eating a bunch of kale makes you sleep terribly and also makes you get sick less often so sleep deprivation doesn't bolster your immune system
B. Wrong - The passage doesn't take a position on whether sleeplessness is the ONLY factor that contributes to immune system development, this is not a flaw with the argument
C. Wrong - An amalgamation of LSAT buzzwords that is meant to attract plebs
D. Wrong - I don't think it takes for granted that an observable correlation would occur, it sounds like the passage establishes that something observable happened and tries to explain it.
E. The passage says "wow people get sick less frequently when they're sleep deprived, it must be that sleep deprivation is not unhealthy" this flawed reasoning seems to be exactly what is described in answer choice E. Because illness is not associated with sleep deprivation then sleep deprivation must not have other negative consequences. What if sleep deprivation also gives you cancer, what if sleep deprivation also makes you fall asleep at the wheel. This flaw just seems considerably larger to me than any issue of not considering that there is a third factor at play as per answer choice A.

Any insight on this question would be greatly appreciated.
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-74-section-1-question-18

Comments

  • Accounts PlayableAccounts Playable Live Sage ⭐
    3107 karma
    This is a pretty cookie cutter correlation/causation flaw, and answer A is one way to severely weaken this argument. If it's the case that something causes people to sleep less and get sick, then affecting sleeps probably won't do much. I think the most likely thing would be a weak immune system. That would probably affect sleep and frequency of illness.

    Answer E is wrong because the argument just doesn't make this flaw, and to me, answer E is sort of nonsense/gibberish here to confuse us. Here's what I think it says:

    Say I eat a lot of donuts. Even if a specific negative consequence that isn't associated with eating donuts (like something weird such as getting an eye infection), the phenomenon (i.e. eating donuts) might have other negative consequences. But isn't that reasonable? Of course eating a lot of donuts has other negative consequence--diabetes.



  • ToxoplasmosisToxoplasmosis Alum Member
    233 karma
    @"Accounts Playable" Thank you for the response, I think this helped clear up my misunderstanding, I think I was hastily reading E and taking it to mean something that it doesn't in fact mean.
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