#10 - People who are allergic to cats are actually allergic

[chian9010]

I am very confused about this question. I know It is a must-be-true question and contains many premises.

Premise1 : People who are allergic to cats are actually allergic to certain proteins and which particular proteins are responsible varies from person to person.
Premise2 : all cats shed skin and spread saliva around their environment.
Sub-conclusion: Cat are capable of provoking allergic reactions.and some cats are even more common to cause some people allergy.

I chose D as the subconclusion seems to indicate that some people are easier to get allergy effect?

[Adam Tyson]

This is a tough one, chian9010, but it may help to note that the stem here is a "Most Strongly Supported" stem, which is sort of like the weaker sibling to a full-force Must Be True question. In a true Must Be True scenario, the correct answer is absolutely and completely proven by the facts in the stimulus. In a Most Strongly Supported variant, however, the correct answer is supported by the facts but doesn't absolutely have to be true. Think of it like a Strengthen question in reverse, where the information in the stimulus strengthens, but doesn't necessarily prove, one of the answer choices, while the other answers are completely unsupported by the stimulus.

Answer choice D is unsupported because the stimulus gives us no information at all about the relative intensity of various allergic reactions. Some people have reactions, others do not, but among those that are allergic it could be true that all those reactions are of equal intensity. In the real world that seems unlikely, because we know that some people will have mild reactions - maybe a few sneezes and a little itching around the eyes - while others will have full on anaphylactic shock and stop breathing. This stimulus, though, doesn't give us any of that information, and we shouldn't bring in that outside info to our answer choices. Do the facts of the stimulus tell us anything about the intensity of the reactions? Nope, only that some folks will react and others will not.

Answer choice C does get some support from the stimulus. Based on the claims that some cats will cause reactions in some people who are allergic and not in others who are allergic, and that the proteins that cause those reactions are different from one person to the next, it seems to be a reasonable inference that the cats have variances in which proteins they are spewing around the environment. Cat A is spreading protein X, which some people are allergic to, and Cat B is spreading protein Y, which different people are allergic to.

Now if we dig a little deeper, we are going to find out that this answer is even stronger than it first appeared, and in fact it Must Be True. Imagine for a moment, that it was not. What if all cats spread the exact same proteins as each other. They are all spreading both X and Y, in my example. Now, if you are allergic to cats, you will be allergic to ALL cats, right? If you are allergic to X, or if you are allergic to Y, you will be allergic to all the little furry monsters because they are all spreading both. In that case, it couldn't be true that some allergic people would react to one cat and not to another. A person allergic to any cat would be allergic to all cats, and would react to them all!

Be sure to base your answers on any Must Be True question, including the Most Strongly Supported variant, solely on the facts presented in the stimulus, with no outside help. Beware of any answer that brings up information not mentioned in the stimulus, as those are mostly trap answers! They can be correct only if the new information is either not necessary for the answer to work, or if they are not really new but are covered by some larger, umbrella concept in the stimulus. A common example of the latter is where the stimulus tells you something about "all animals" and the correct answer is about "humans" (because we are animals, and therefore covered by that umbrella of "all animals").

Keep at it, good luck!

[ShannonOh22]

Hi Powerscore experts, I'm stumped on this one. Please help!

I chose E as my initial answer, and when reading through the stimulus and all of the answer choices again, I'm still not seeing how C is stronger than E. How is C correct, when the stimulus doesn't actually address the similarities (or differences) between "certain proteins found in the animals' skin secretions and saliva", but it DOES say the effect these proteins have "varies from allergy sufferer to allergy sufferer".

The stimulus does seem to strongly support E - "there is no way to predict whether a given cat will produce an allergic reaction in a particular allergy sufferer" in the final sentence "it is common for a given cat to cause an allergic reaction in some - but not all - people who are allergic to cats."

The stimulus in general seems to focus more on the people who suffer from allergies, as opposed to the cats, which is why I think I'm having such trouble seeing why C is correct. Can you please clarify? Thank you!

[James Finch]

Hi Shannon,

(C) is very likely to be true because of two things mentioned in the stimulus: first, that cats cause allergies via proteins contained in their skin secretions and saliva, and second, that some cats cause allergies for some cat-allergic people, but not for other cat-allergic people. This means that some cats have different allergenic proteins, and that there isn't one single protein that causes all cat allergies.

Hope this clears things up!

[ser219]

Can someone explain why E is wrong?

[James Finch]

Hi Ser,

The issue with (E) is simply that we don't know that there's no way to predict whether a certain cat would cause allergies or not; it may be that the particular protein that causes one person's allergies is known and associated with only a few breeds of cat, so that if that person walked into a house that had one of those breeds living in it, they would have an allergic reaction. One has to be careful not to assume that simply because the cause "varies" that it is unpredictable. In fact, based on the information in the stimulus, it seems likely that allergic reactions to cats would be predicable assuming that one could determine the exact protein(s) that causes the allergy in an individual person. So there's simply no evidence for (E), so it is incorrect.

Hope this helps!

[Vicky7411]

I am confused why B is the incorrect answer choice. I was stuck between B and C, but ultimately chose B. I chose B because of the phrase in the stimulus that says which proteins affect a person's allergy varies from person to person. I took that to mean that there is no protein that affects all people who have cat allergies. What is obvious about why B is wrong?

[Adam Tyson]

You're correct about the proteins, Vicky7411, but answer B is not about the proteins. It is about the cats that spread them. Could it be that there is some cat out there that produces every single protein that might cause an allergic reaction? Some sort of super-allergen cat that makes all the sufferers react? Sure, that could happen - the stimulus never suggests otherwise. Different people react to different proteins, and we know that not all cats will make every allergy sufferer react, but there still could be some cats that do.

[queenbee]

Hi
For this one I select (B) because the stimulus said: it is common for a given cat to provoke and allergic reaction in some, but not all, people who are allergic to cats.

B says that no cat is capable of provoking an allergic reaction in all allergy sufferers.

Would you please help me understand why this is not a good answer? Is it the "some" and "all" that makes this incorrect?
Thank you

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Exactly queenbee! Answer choice (B) is just way too strong based on the support from the stimulus. We know that there are cats out there, many in fact, that cause allergies in some, but not all, people. However, we don't know that there aren't outlier cats. Saying something is common isn't the same as saying it's universal. We can't jump from common to universal, as answer choice (B) attempts to do.