#11 - Several thousand years ago, people in what is now

[kgalaraga93]

Hi there,

I don't understand why the answer to #11 is E. The passage stated that the use of corn led to their having health-related problems, but this answer says that using corn as a supplement improves health. I chose answer (A) because the beginning sentence indicated that the switch to corn was because it grew faster and produced more food which is exactly what this answer entailed. Very confused on this, help would be appreciated. thanks

Kim

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi Kim, and thanks for your post!

This is a Resolve the Paradox question, so it is helpful to prephrase here before reading the answer choices. My prephrase would be something about why corn is not actually detrimental to health; the paradox is that corn is less nutritious but they kept using it anyway, so we need something to explain that choice. A doesn't do that; it is giving somewhat irrelevant information (irrelevant because even if this type of corn produces more food, that doesn't explain why they ignored the nutritional effects). E, on the other hand, explains why even though they had health problems at first, they still kept growing corn - because those health problems did not last once they figured out how to supplement corn.

I hope that helps!

[kgalaraga93]

great explanation, I didn't even think of it as a resolve the paradox question. thank you so much, this helped a lot!

[chian9010]

Hi Kim, and thanks for your post!

This is a Resolve the Paradox question, so it is helpful to prephrase here before reading the answer choices. My prephrase would be something about why corn is not actually detrimental to health; the paradox is that corn is less nutritious but they kept using it anyway, so we need something to explain that choice. A doesn't do that; it is giving somewhat irrelevant information (irrelevant because even if this type of corn produces more food, that doesn't explain why they ignored the nutritional effects). E, on the other hand, explains why even though they had health problems at first, they still kept growing corn - because those health problems did not last once they figured out how to supplement corn.

I hope that helps!

Hmm, I am sorry but this answer doesn't really convince me.
I see it as a resolve the paradox problem. However, my prephrase is that corn is indeed detrimental to health but why people continued to grow it?

I understand your reason that E brought in new information (nongrain foods) to solve the health problem. However, I think there is a red flag on this statement because it indicates "some years after adopting corn."

In the stimulus, it indicates that soon after these people established corn, they began having nutrition-related health problem. I feel like there is a time lag in between E (they found new way to solve the health problem some years after..) and the stimulus.
If they began having nutrition problem right after they switched to corn, it doesn't make any sense that they will keep continue doing it without solving the problem until after some years.

However, for answer choice A, it specifically tell us that the advantage of corn is that they can produce more food.

[lsatdaily]

Hi Kim, and thanks for your post!

This is a Resolve the Paradox question, so it is helpful to prephrase here before reading the answer choices. My prephrase would be something about why corn is not actually detrimental to health; the paradox is that corn is less nutritious but they kept using it anyway, so we need something to explain that choice. A doesn't do that; it is giving somewhat irrelevant information (irrelevant because even if this type of corn produces more food, that doesn't explain why they ignored the nutritional effects). E, on the other hand, explains why even though they had health problems at first, they still kept growing corn - because those health problems did not last once they figured out how to supplement corn.

I hope that helps!

Hmm, I am sorry but this answer doesn't really convince me.
I see it as a resolve the paradox problem. However, my prephrase is that corn is indeed detrimental to health but why people continued to grow it?

I understand your reason that E brought in new information (nongrain foods) to solve the health problem. However, I think there is a red flag on this statement because it indicates "some years after adopting corn."

In the stimulus, it indicates that soon after these people established corn, they began having nutrition-related health problem. I feel like there is a time lag in between E (they found new way to solve the health problem some years after..) and the stimulus.
If they began having nutrition problem right after they switched to corn, it doesn't make any sense that they will keep continue doing it without solving the problem until after some years.

However, for answer choice A, it specifically tell us that the advantage of corn is that they can produce more food.

Hi,

I had the same thought process with chian and chose A , can someone please explain?

Thank you!

[Dave Killoran]

Hmm, I am sorry but this answer doesn't really convince me.

Just to add a bit of perspective here, always keep in mind that the goal here is to understand how the test makers see each answer. How you or I see it is somewhat irrelevant in the grand scheme of things As I like to say, You Can't Argue With the LSAT.

I understand your reason that E brought in new information (nongrain foods) to solve the health problem. However, I think there is a red flag on this statement because it indicates "some years after adopting corn."

Note the last sentence in the stimulus, which states that "the people continued to grow corn as their staple grain..." I've italicized "continued" there because that opens up the time horizon. Plus, we are talking about nutritional effect on an entire population, something that wouldn't be apparent immediately and likely took some years to identify and analyze.

However, for answer choice A, it specifically tell us that the advantage of corn is that they can produce more food.

Answer choice (A) doesn't give us anything new to work with, and when resolving a paradox, you must have new information. Specifically, we are told in the stimulus that "corn, which grows faster and produces more food per unit of land than do the grains these people had grown previously." In (A), what we have is more corn, just a slightly better producing version of ancestors of that variety (which may or may not have been used by the people, but even if so, that is irrelevant; it's still corn, just more of it). There's nothing about nutrition in (A), which is the key issue in the stimulus.

Thanks!

[sqmusgrave]

Why is D wrong? It's saying that they planted corn and it grew really well in the stimulus. Answer choice D says the other grain options required less fertile soil to grow than corn. Evidently the fertile soil was a good match for growing corn, and a poor match for other grains- which would explain why they continued to grow corn.

It seems like this could be a plausible tricky correct answer, because the general assumption is that things which require fertile soil are going to be harder to grow, since it's common knowledge that having less fertile soil can make growing tricky. But plenty of places still have very fertile soil, so it seems the reverse would be true- that in these areas things that require less fertile soil can't be grown. In any case it boils down to an incompatibility in soil fertility to crop- so corn requiring more fertile soil than other grains is just another way of saying other grains need different conditions than corn to grow. Because of that, I thought D would be correct.
I didn't like E because I thought it implied that they realized they weren't getting enough nutrients with corn and needed to supplement with other stuff. If you realize that something is causing health issues, it doesn't make sense to keep it as your staple and just add in extra supplements. It makes more sense to just choose a different staple? But for D, that explains why even if they knew about the health issues, they wouldn't choose a different staple, i.e. because other grains don't grow as well as corn does in fertile soil (implied by taking the fact that corn grows well in that area (stimulus) and that corn requires very fertile soil (from choice D).

Can someone help me understand why this is wrong? How could I have known that this is not the train of thought that the test makers had in mind?
Thanks!

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, sqmusgrave!

Great questions!

In this Resolve the Paradox question, we are trying to determine why is was/how it's possible that (1) people continued to grow corn even though (2) the corn was nutritionally deficient and they could have grown the more nutritious alternative grains.

In answer choice (D) we are presented with information that among the other more nutritious grain crops, some could be planted in less fertile soil than the soil required by corn.

Given this information, it becomes more inexplicable why people didn't turn to other grains. After all, the information in (D) gives us another reason why they could have done something else instead, that is, plant these more nutritious crops.

This answer does the opposite of what we want it to do. We want to understand why they continued growing corn.

Answer choice (E) gives a direct explanation that bridges these two concepts. Given the availability of alternative supplements to nutrition, the grain itself no longer need be the source of these nutrients.

I didn't like E because I thought it implied that they realized they weren't getting enough nutrients with corn and needed to supplement with other stuff. If you realize that something is causing health issues, it doesn't make sense to keep it as your staple and just add in extra supplements. It makes more sense to just choose a different staple?

Pay attention to your analysis here. When we are talking here about what does and doesn't make sense for people to do in our own judgment, we are at risk of adding additional assumptions to the information presented in the stimulus and answer choices. While we might think it would make more sense to switch to a different grain, with the information presented to us in the stimulus we are unable to arrive at this conclusion.

I hope this helps!