Q12 - Researcher: Research has shown that

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Smelling lavender reduces stress. Intense stress can cause illness. Therefore the people who regularly inhale lavender reduce their risk of illness.

Answer Anticipation:
There's a jump here in the discussion of stress. On the one hand, the researcher talks about reducing stress with lavender. On the other, she talks about INTENSE stress leading to disease. Before it can be concluded that lavender-smellers receive a benefit from the smell, it has to be established that they started off with enough stress to cause problems. I'd imagine that someone who is regularly using aromatherapy probably started off pretty low-stress.

Correct answer:
(B)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) First off, ignore the "if not all" - that "if" tells us that we're not guaranteed all, so this answer is just about many of the scents. The LSAT throws this aside in from time to time to get you to think the answer is stronger than it actually is. This answer also largely reflects what the argument already states as its premises, so this is a premise booster.

(B) Boom. If this answer is negated, it becomes, "No one who regularly inhales lavender had enough stress to hurt their immune system." If that's the case, the conclusion fails.

(C) Out of scope. The conclusion is about people who regularly inhale lavender, and this answer is about people who inhale lavender for two specific reasons. This second group may inhale lavender for those benefits only sporadically.

(D) Degree. That "anyone" is too strong for a conclusion about a subset of people. Also, the argument would still work if this effect was secondary, so "primarily" is too strong, as well.

(E) Degree. That "only" is too limiting. This answer choice says it's only the stressed-out people who can get a benefit from this treatment, whereas the conclusion just states that it will work for some people (not just those people).

Takeaway/Pattern:
When analyzing answer choices, make sure to only rely on what they definitively state. That "if not all" in (A) is a red herring that's irrelevant to the logic of the answer.

#officialexplanation

[anonymous93]

I can see now why B is correct, but what makes C incorrect? If we assume that some people who inhale lavender are more susceptible to illness than average, doesn't that undermine the argument?

[contropositive]

I can see now why B is correct, but what makes C incorrect? If we assume that some people who inhale lavender are more susceptible to illness than average, doesn't that undermine the argument?

I am not sure how to address your question about the negation. However, I can tell you that without negating I realized C is wrong because it is about "people who use the scent of lavender to induce relaxation and reduce stress"

The people in the argument did not have a purpose of smelling lavender. They may be smelling it because they simply enjoy the smell not necessarily because of relaxation and stress.
I understand some like to negate all the answer choices on a necessary assumption to arrive at the right answer, but I would suggest looking at the argument core and figuring out the assumption. This is an effective way to get to the right answer quickly.

Here is my thought process:
Premise: intense stress can impair the immune system, making one more susceptible to illness.
Conclusion: it is likely that incidence of illness among those who regularly inhale the scent of lavender is reduced by this practice

Assumption:those who regularly inhale the scent of lavender are under intense stress

A) it sounds like something i already read in the premise; premise booster. also it talks about "scents" in general which is too broad for necessary assumption question

B) matches the assumption

D) sort of like A but more strong by introducing the idea of "primarily". still too broad

E) the word "only" is too strong for this question type, and it doesn't connect to the idea of inhaling scent of lavender.

[turtle]

Can someone please do a walkthrough of this whole problem? Thanks in advance!

[NatalieC941]

I want to go back to the B versus C analysis.

B makes sense as it is, but in the moment I didn't so easily label C as "out of scope" just because the language didn't include "those who regularly inhale".

If C were to have said, "At least some people who use the scent of lavender regularly are no more susceptible to illness than average" how would that change our understanding of evaluating the answer choices? If you negate it, "At least some people who use the scent of lavender regularly are more susceptible to illness than average" then wouldn't that weaken the conclusion? In that case, would it be correct?


Thanks!

[ohthatpatrick]

It doesn't seem to me like negating your amended-(C) would affect the argument to me.

The conclusion isn't saying that people who huff lavender on the regs are LESS likely to have illness compared to the rest of the population.

It's saying that lavender-sniffers would be reducing their own likelihood of illness. Perhaps their initial reference point is being more susceptible to illness than average, but lavender might help bring their incidence of illness down nonetheless.

[Emmeline Ndongue]

I want to go back to the B versus C analysis.

B makes sense as it is, but in the moment I didn't so easily label C as "out of scope" just because the language didn't include "those who regularly inhale".

If C were to have said, "At least some people who use the scent of lavender regularly are no more susceptible to illness than average" how would that change our understanding of evaluating the answer choices? If you negate it, "At least some people who use the scent of lavender regularly are more susceptible to illness than average" then wouldn't that weaken the conclusion? In that case, would it be correct?


Thanks!

I think "At least some people who use the scent of lavender regularly are more susceptible to illness than average" doesn't fully negate your abridged answer choice C.

"At least some people" means "At least one or more person."

Your abridged C: "At least some people who use the scent of lavender regularly are no more susceptible to illness than average." According to this, it could be one person or it could be all the people, we can't be sure. "One or more person ~. are no more ~." and "One or more person ~. are more~." can be true and happening at the same time.
(~.: who use the scent of lavender........susceptible to illness than avg.)

It's best to negate this by saying "No one" who use the scent of lavender regularly are no susceptible to illness than average. This rules out all the uncertainties.

[EmilyL849]

Hi, Gurus.

I have one question regarding choice (A)

To me, (A) does not sound just like a premise booster.

Because premise talks about 1) inhaling lavender reducing stress and 2) intense stress causing an increase in susceptibility to illness as two separate things. However, (A) connects the missing link that is necessary to conclude that an act of inhaling lavender scent reduces the incidence of illness.

And, “many” in LSAT language is identical to some. A weak language.
If (A) is negated, “No scent that have a tendency to reduce susceptibility to illness do so at least in part by reducing stress”. This definitely destroys the argument.

Is the reason why this is not a necessary assumption is due to “if not all”? In this context, many means most. If that’s the reason, I understand why this is too strong to be an answer. But if as usual “many = some”, there must be something wrong with my reasoning...

Thank you for your help!

[ohthatpatrick]

Be careful with thinking that "many is identical to some". That's not true.

Some = at least one
Many = at least a handful (5 or more, if you want to assign a made-up numeric threshold)

You're just remembering teachers/books reminding you that "many" is pretty weak, just as "some" is.

We emphasize this because otherwise people tend to hear "many" and start thinking we're saying something powerful like "most".

And here the gap between "at least one" and "at least a handful" is precisely why (A) is wrong.

You're correct that if (A) were written as
(A) Some, if not all, of the scents that ....
it would be fine

But "many" is more than the author needs to assume.
If we negate (A), it would say "not many scents that help protect us against illness do so in part by reducing stress". That wouldn't hurt the author's argument, because she could simply respond "Cool ... I'm just saying that lavender works that way. I have no idea if any other scents that protect against illness also work that way."

If you want a quick real world example of how "some" and "many" mean different things,
suppose that Trump held a top secret meeting and then later the details of that meaning were reported in the papers.

We would correctly assume that
"some person from that meeting leaked the info"
whereas it would be weirder/different to assume that
"many people from that meeting leaked the info"

The context in which "some" and "many" are fairly interchangeable are questions that desire the strongest answer possible:
"Which of the following, if true, most ..... "
STRENGTHEN
WEAKEN
EXPLAIN/RESOLVE

In those answer choices, seeing "some" or "many" would similarly lead us to think, "Hmmm, is this too weak?"

But in Inference, Nec Assumption, and Reading Comp, we certainly are not allowed to say
"because I know that Some A's are B, I'm allowed to pick this answer that says Many A's are B"

"many" has a higher burden of proof than "some".

[EmilyL849]

Thank you Patrick!

That was very crystal clear! I will be sure not to equate some and many in necessary assumption q especially.

Thanks again.