LSAT 133 – Section 3 – Question 18

LSAT 133 - Section 3 - Question 18

June 2011

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT133 S3 Q18
+LR
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Causal Reasoning +CausR
Net Effect +NetEff
A
61%
165
B
9%
155
C
4%
157
D
17%
162
E
9%
161
146
158
170
 +Harder 147.69 +SubsectionMedium

The probability of avoiding heart disease is increased if one avoids fat in one’s diet. Furthermore, one is less likely to eat fat if one avoids eating dairy foods. Thus the probability of maintaining good health is increased by avoiding dairy foods.

Summarize Argument
The argument concludes that avoiding dairy foods will increase the probability of maintaining good health. This is supported by two premises: if you avoid eating dairy you’re less likely to eat fat, and avoiding eating fat reduces the risk of heart disease.

Identify and Describe Flaw
The argument claims that avoiding dairy is good for health overall, just based on claims about heart disease. This overlooks the possibility that avoiding dairy could also have negative impacts on health. For example, dairy may provide some critical nutrient, or might reduce the risk of a different disease.

A
The argument ignores the possibility that, even though a practice may have potentially negative consequences, its elimination may also have negative consequences.
Even though eating dairy could have the negative consequence of raising the risk of heart disease, avoiding eating dairy might also cause negative health effects. This possibility is ignored by the argument.
B
The argument fails to consider the possibility that there are more ways than one of decreasing the risk of a certain type of occurrence.
The argument isn’t claiming that there are no other ways to decrease the risk of heart disease, only discussing one possible way, namely avoiding eating dairy.
C
The argument presumes, without providing justification, that factors that carry increased risks of negative consequences ought to be eliminated.
The argument doesn’t make this presumption. It claims that avoiding dairy will increase the probability of maintaining good health, but it doesn’t tell us we “ought” to avoid dairy.
D
The argument fails to show that the evidence appealed to is relevant to the conclusion asserted.
All the evidence provided in the argument is directly relevant to the conclusion. The issue is just that the conclusion is broader than what the evidence allows, not that the evidence is irrelevant.
E
The argument fails to consider that what is probable will not necessarily occur.
The argument consistently sticks to discussing probabilities and likeliness, and never makes a jump to saying that something will definitely occur.

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LSAT PrepTest 133 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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