#12 - One year ago a local government initiated an

[Haleyeastham]

Having a very difficult time figuring out how D strengthens the argument- seems like it could even weaken it. Can you please clarify?

Thank you!

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Haley,

Thanks for the question! Let's first break down the argument, and then we'll take a closer look at answer choice (D).

The stimulus sets up a scenario where a local government ran an antismoking advertising campaign. This campaign was financed by taxing cigarettes at 20 cents per pack. A year later smoking was down 3%, and so the author concludes that the cause of the decline was the advertising campaign.

Now, the first thing to realize is that this is a causal argument. The author sees two things happening in succession, and concludes that the first caused the second. If we wanted, we could capture that using a causal diagram:

• Cause Effect
  
  antismoking advertising campaign decline in number of smokers.

The relationship doesn't have to be diagrammed, though. I just did that so it was as clear as possible.

Second, when you read that argument, what's your reaction? Are you fully convinced that the author's conclusion is valid? Did you see any weakness in that argument? When I read that problem, I thought to myself, "How does the author know it's the advertising campaign that worked? If they raised the price by 20 cents, maybe the higher cost caused people to smoke less."

When I see that's it's a strengthen question, I'm not in trouble: I can still use the prephrased weakness that I saw. But instead of just using it as-is (which would hurt the argument), instead I would love an answer that eliminates that weakness. In basic causal arguments, if you eliminate an alternate cause, that strengthens the argument.

Answer choice (D) does just that. When I read the stimulus I saw an alternate cause for the conclusion, namely that it might have been the higher price that reduced the number of smokers. Answer choice (D) eliminates the higher price as a possible cause, because if the merchants absorbed the cost of the tax (which is essentially what happens when they reduce the price 20 cents), then the cost of a pack of cigarettes remained the same as before. If the price was the same, that means that cost wasn't a factor here. In abstract terms, (D) eliminates an alternate cause for the conclusion, and thus strengthens the argument.

Overall, this is a great question because it allows you to see how one of the fundamental reasoning/question type relationships on the LSAT works (strengthening a causal conclusion by eliminating an alt cause). So, I really want to make sure this makes total sense for you. If you have any questions, please let me know. Thanks!

[Johnclem]

Hi ,
Could someone please help me get rid of AC (B) for this one ? I got rid of it because I thought it may weaken but I wasn't 100% sure. I thought the word "substantial" weakens , since The conclusion used " a number of people". Also I didn't see how quitting smoking after the ad had ended would strengthen the conclusion.

Thanks
John

[Adam Tyson]

Thanks for the question, John.

Answer B doesn't do anything to strengthen the argument because all it does it show additional effects - people reducing smoking in addition to those that quit. More effects have no impact on a causal argument, either positive or negative. To strengthen a causal argument you have to 1) eliminate an alternate cause, 2) show that when the cause is present, the effect is present, 3) show that when the cause is absent, the effect is absent, 4) suggest that the causal relationship might be reversed, or 5) do something to undermine the data, if the argument was based on data.

Stick to those five things and you can't go wrong! Since answer B provides none of those, it doesn't help. The cause could still be the money, or some other cause, and still some people could have reduced their smoking.

As to your question about quitting after the ad had ended, I'm not sure where you are seeing that idea in the argument or the correct answer choice, which is D (eliminating the money as a potential alternate cause). There's no suggestion, either in the stimulus or in that answer, that anything happened after the ad ended. In fact, I see no indication that the ad campaign ever ended - it could be ongoing. Still, even if the ad only ran for a week a year ago, it could still be that it caused a bunch of people to quit, and today they remain non-smokers.

I hope that clears things up for you!

[rpark8214]

Hi,

Is answer choice (A) incorrect because you cannot assume that the residents of the locality traded off other tobacco products with cigarettes? I had a difficult time with (A) because I thought it eliminated a potential alternate cause, and supported the fact that the decline was indeed due to the advertisements, not that residents were choosing other products like snuff/chewing tobacco instead of smoking.

Thank you!

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, Rpark,

Good question. Answer choice (A) obfuscates the issue by bringing up alternative tobacco products. You are correct that you could understand answer choice (A) as eliminating an alternate cause, that is, the decline in smoking is not because of people switching to other products; therefore it is more likely the ad campaign was a cause.

However, there are some problems with this answer choice. If people had switched to other tobacco products, this switch could have been the result of the ad campaign. After all, people would still technically be smoking less (dipping more?). Thus, eliminating this possibility does not necessarily directly strengthen the argument. You have to bring in additional assumptions to make answer choice (A) work.

In addition, the most glaring issue in the stimulus is whether the tax was the alternate cause. This is the key question that likely will be addressed in the credited response. Since answer choice (D) does a solid job eliminating the tax as the alternate cause, (D) is the best answer, the answer that strengthens this argument the most.

[CoolHumanPerson]

Hey! I am having trouble understanding why A is incorrect. I do think D works but I can't understand why A doesn't.

Here, we are given a correlation between the ad, price increase and drop in smoking. From the correlation, we get a causation that the ad is what caused the drop in smoking.

The flaw here is that the author overlooks all other alternate causes of the drop in smoking. In a strengthen question, an AC that denies an alternate causal explanation wins. For example, an AC that says or implies that X, an alternate cause for the drop in smoking, did not actually happen or that it can't be the cause will be the correct AC.

Coming to AC A which says that the residents did not increase use of other forms of tobacco. Here, X i.e. the alternate cause, is given as people's increased use of other forms of tobacco. AC A denies this alternate cause.

The explanation that the 3% decrease in smoking happened because people switched over to other forms of tobacco seems like a valid alternate cause for the drop. Given a small percentage decrease, it is entirely reasonable that people switched how they wanted their tobacco kick. So, "3% people stopped smoking because they had switched over to other forms of tobacco instead" is a sound alternate causal explanation. And denying this alternate explanation increases the likelihood of ad causing the drop being true.

Could someone please help? TIA!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi CoolHumanPerson!

It could help to start with the conclusion of this stimulus, which is the final sentence: "Clearly, what was said in the advertisements had an effect, although a small one, on the number of people in the locality who smoke cigarettes." This is a causal claim that just involves cigarettes, and not other tobacco products.

As I read answer choice (A), it doesn't really do much to this causal relationship. The asserted cause is the advertisements, and the claimed effect is that there was a decrease in the number of people who smoke cigarettes. Whether or not people increased or decreased their use of other tobacco products doesn't really have a bearing on whether the ads caused a decrease in smoking (as opposed to the tax causing this decrease). For instance, if we take the "not" out of answer choice (A), so that it's saying that people did increase their use of other tobacco products, that wouldn't seem to have a bearing either--in particular, it wouldn't seem to weaken the claim being made, because we'd still be left wondering whether the ads caused the decrease. For the same reason, if we put the "not" back in, it doesn't strengthen the causal claim being made.