PT44.S4.Q14 - scientists hypothesize that a particular type

skdygks03skdygks03 Alum Member
edited April 2017 in Logical Reasoning 34 karma

Hi all

I cannot find any reason why (C) is wrong here.
It seems to me that (C) eliminates one alternative cause (genetic cause?) and thereby strengthen the argument that P-fat is responsible for the development of eyesight.
I compared (C) with (A) in S4Q17 in the same PT. (A) eliminates one possibility alternative by saying that "Earth did not pass through clouds of cosmic dust earlier than 800,000 years ago. This is because it negates an possibility that something other than fluctuation might have caused ice-age if the ice-age had occurred earlier than 800,000 years ago when the fluctuation started to happen. (A) turned out to strengthen the argument. Then, why does (C) not strengthen the argument? (I mean Q14)

Thank you very much
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-44-section-4-question-14/

Comments

  • Mitchell-1Mitchell-1 Member
    756 karma

    S4Q17 states, four of these five lend SOME support to the hypothesis, which one doesn't?
    S4Q14 states, one of these five lends the MOST support to the hypothesis, which is it?

    So, it's possible that by eliminating a genetic component you did strengthen the hypothesis SOME, but does that strengthen it MORE than answer B? The question states, we have observed that after birth, babies that do X have better eyesight than babies that don't do X (X=being fed high p-fat diet). They then left an extra observation at the end. We also noticed that babies that don't do Y have better eyesight than babies that do Y (Y=being born six weeks premature). Maybe X is just correlated to bad eyesight and not the cause? We have another potential cause in the mix (Y). Answer B connects Y back to X. Well now Y is doing exactly the same thing as X (depriving the baby of p-fat). This gives you a much stronger argument that p-fat deprivation is a potential cause of worse eyesight.

    So to generalize it, which is better for an argument:
    1) Eliminating one of potentially limitless other potential causes
    2) Show that a second situation that leads to your end result has strong potential to be caused by the same variable you controlled for in the first situation.

  • SamiSami Yearly + Live Member Sage ⭐ 7Sage Tutor
    edited April 2017 10806 karma

    @skdygks03 said:
    Hi all

    I cannot find any reason why (C) is wrong here.
    It seems to me that (C) eliminates one alternative cause (genetic cause?) and thereby strengthen the argument that P-fat is responsible for the development of eyesight.

    So according to C -was the cause of the poor eye sight in these mothers a result of poor development of eyesight or did this poor eyesight happen because of another cause?
    - We just don't know. We are simply concerned about the problem of "development of eyesight". Answer choice "C" is ambiguous about if the "mothers" fall under the relevant group our stimulus is concerned about, the development of eyesight. We don't really care about all bad eye sights which could have multiple causes other than development issues.

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