#9 - A recent study of several hundred female physicians

[James Finch]

Hi Shannon,

This is a common problem I've noticed for students. Lawyers have to be very precise with their language, most especially concerning the laws and the rules that govern their application, and so the LSAT tests for the ability to efficiently parse through difficult language. This also involves not making unwarranted assumptions, instead keeping in mind exactly what you know to be true and what you don't know to be true. So be very careful about language and always think through what each statement means before moving on.

Hope this helps!

[rita02]

Hi PS,

I chose answer choice D because I thought that it brings out a flaw in the study. If the pool of people in the study are all healthy, perhaps their lack of a preexisting heart condition led to the inhibition of the development of HD rather than their intake of those viatmins. I am still struggling to eliminate answer choice D for this reason.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Rita,

The problem with your read of answer choice (D) is that we know from the stimulus that was variability in how the physicians fared during the study. We know that because it tells us that their tendency of developing coronary disease was inversely proportional to the their dietary intake of folate and B6. Because of the relationship given, we know there must be some variability in both dietary intake and coronary disease occurrence in order for the researchers to have drawn the conclusion they did.

So if they were all healthy, but some of them still developed the disease, that makes an even stronger case for folate and B6 in an inhibitory role.

Hope that helps!
Rachael