#18 - The probability of avoiding heart disease is increased

[Jonathan Evans]

I'm going to start calling these situations "Fake shell game" because they come up on these hard questions. Basically, the LSAT writers introduce something that is kinda shell-game-ish but not really, either because the two terms really are analogous, one is a necessary subset of the other, or there is a larger, overriding flaw that renders this shift irrelevant.

In this case, it's fair to say that reducing the occurrence of heart disease could be correctly related to having good health. The flaw in this argument does relate to this connection but attacks it in a different way than by detaching heart disease from good health. You have probably noted correctly that other health problems could occur from avoiding dairy in an attempt to avoid fat in order to reduce heart disease.

However, if there were no other possible problems with avoiding dairy and it had the unvarnished outcome of less heart disease, it would be safe to say that would be good for health. Thus the evidence appealed to is relevant to the conclusion. That knocks out D.

The flaw is in the other potential problems. So, great, less fat with less dairy, but are we missing out on something else that could contribute to good health? In fact, as far as we know dairy could lessen the risk of heart disease by some other quality it has, in spite of its high fat.

This is where you get your good prephrase: Conclusion about dairy ignores possible good things about dairy in spite of bad things about dairy.

Translate this into something more abstract:

Argument ignores possible positive attribute of something that also can contribute to something negative.

Now match this prephrase ABSTRACT to ABSTRACT with the flaw answer choices.

Answer choice A is an excellent match.

The key word on these abstract Method of Reasoning or Flaw questions is MATCH. You have to correlate part to part, and as Nikki noted, watch out for stuff that seems far too easy. The hard questions are hard. You have to put in the work.

[cameron_bodell]

Hey there,

So I understand why the correct answer is (A), but it seems like the argument also ignores other ways of avoiding heart disease (i.e. exercise). This line of thinking is answer (B), but I'm guessing (B) is wrong because the argument never claimed that the ONLY way to avoid heart disease was by avoiding fats/dairy foods? Is this a correct summary of why (B) is wrong?

Thanks

[Adam Tyson]

Spot on, Cameron - nowhere does our author claim that avoiding dairy or avoiding fat is the only way to get good health generally or lower heart disease specifically. He says only that avoiding dairy will increase the likelihood of maintaining good health. The only thing being ignored, as discussed previously here, is that avoiding dairy might have some negative consequences that could outweigh the potential gains.

Nice job!

[gwerner]

This is more a vent than a question, but I'm a little miffed that there seems to be some equivocation between terms that I feel affects the "rightness" of an answer choice. In this case, the stim talks about avoiding dairy, whereas the correct choice refers to elimination. I feel that avoiding is not the same as eliminating; for example, if I eliminate dairy I might lose a necessary source of calcium (negative consequences ensue) whereas if I avoid extra dairy (but maintain some low intake) I lower my risk of heart disease while still getting my calcium (negative consequences do no ensue). I know that this exact scenario isn't born out in the question, however it still feel to me like differentiating between the two is the type of close reading that we should be rewarded for!

(for the record I skipped this question because I couldn't find an answer that unambiguously criticized the argument)

[Steven Palmer]

Hi Gwerner,

I feel your pain here. Elimination and avoidance do seem, in the abstract, to mean different things. However, sometimes the best answer may be phrased in such a way that makes us hesitant to pick it. The key is that it addresses the question more than any of the other answers, since four will not be correct at all, and one will be. In this case, seeing "elimination" may at first make me rule out the correct answer, but after looking at the rest, of which all are more clearly wrong, I read the stimulus again and decided that avoidance, in this case, could mean elimination.

Hope this helped!
Steven

[Tarte au chocolate]

Hello, thank you for the explanation and A now makes sense to me.

I chose D because the first stimulus shows avoiding eat dairy less likely to eat fat

but the second stimulus shows avoid fat lower prob of heart disease

and the conclusion is avoiding dairy lower prob of heart disease

I chose D because i thought the problem is that "less likely to eat fat" is not the same as "avoiding fat", thus the conclusion is not really relevant to the evidence. can u explain why my reasoning is incorrect? thx!

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Tarte au chocolate!

In this argument, we don't need "less likely to eat fat" and "avoiding fat" to mean the exact same thing. Avoiding fat increases one's probability of avoiding heart disease. Avoiding dairy makes one less likely to eat fat (or, in other words, makes it easier to avoid eating fat). So, since avoiding dairy makes it easier to avoid fat, and avoiding fat helps avoid heart disease, these premises are relevant to the conclusion that avoiding dairy increases one's probability of maintaining good health. They don't prove the conclusion, however, because the conclusion is about overall health, whereas the premises are just about one aspect of health (heart disease). So the premises are relevant to the conclusion (because heart disease is relevant to overall health), they just are not sufficient to prove the conclusion (because avoiding dairy might be beneficial for avoiding heart disease, but could cause other negative health consequences, like osteoporosis).

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey