#3 - The government recently released a study of drinking

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Resolve the Paradox. The correct answer choice is (C).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[LSAT2020]

Stimulus:

Gives us a comparison statement:

Public water or bottled water: which is safer and cheaper?

According to the government study, public water is safer and cheaper

Last sentence tells us that despite these findings and their popularity, the sale of water bottles continues to go up.

It's a paradox question.

What if the bottled water companies are having a sweepstake to counter the possibly negative publicity, and the person who finds a special code underneath one of the bottle caps wins $1,000,000?

Answer Choices

A- the fact that bottled water could possible contain harmful ingredients is alarming, but it does nothing to help us figure out why people are willing to continue to buy more bottled water. If anything, this further fuels the questions of why people are willing to buy more bottled water

B- whether or not customers are able to tell a difference in taste between public water and bottled water doesn't help us answer the question of why they're willing to continue to purchase more bottled water

D- this completely contradicts our premise

I am stuck between C and E. When I was working on this section, my only hesitation with E was on whether or not water counts as "food." I figured that if people are doubting the government's validity, then they will dismiss the findings from this recent study, which would explain why people continue to purchase more bottled water. Am I making too many assumptions here? With C, I'm not sure how to interpret the last part that says "which accounted for the increase in sales." Is this literally saying, "this is why in the premise it says that even despite the scandal from the government study, the sales of bottled water continue to rise."

Would greatly appreciate some clarification.

[Robert Carroll]

LSAT,

Hold on - you misread answer choice (E). You read it as saying something like "Government warnings are so common that people are treating it like crying 'wolf'. If the government says not to do it, people basically don't care because they've heard those warnings so many times before."

That's just about the opposite of what answer choice (E) is actually saying. People are doubting foods, not the government warnings. So people are becoming really cautious about food because of government warnings - the warnings are not causing people to be jaded, but instead people are hypercautious because of the warnings. So either "water" does not count as "food", in which case answer choice (E) is completely irrelevant, or the facts about food ARE analogous to those about water...in which case, because people are cautious about food because of government warnings, they'd also be cautious about water. So people would drink LESS bottled water if the government warned them. That's not solving the paradox, it's making it even worse.

Robert Carroll