Q16 - The caffeine in coffee stimulates

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Evaluate

Stimulus Breakdown:
Caffeine irritates the stomach. Darker coffee roasts have a chemical that soothes the stomach. Therefore, darker roasts are better for your stomach than lighter roasts.

Answer Anticipation:
Darker roasts may have one thing in them that helps the stomach, but are there any other differences between them and lighter roasts that would have the opposite impact? The argument doesn’t state that to be true, so it'd be helpful to know. We also already know that caffeine can irritate the stomach, so an answer about increased caffeine levels in dark roast seems like a good bet.

Correct answer:
(A)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Right off the bat! If dark roasting coffee increases caffeine levels, maybe that balances out the chemical. If it doesn't, maybe the conclusion is a good one.

(B) Out of scope. The argument is about stomach irritation, not stomach functioning.

(C) Interesting. This answer choice is trying to get you to think that maybe people would drink more dark roast coffee, thus balancing out the caffeine vs. NMP. However, we don't know the relative level of caffeine in dark roast (that was only brought up in (A)), so this answer doesn't help.

(D) Similar to (C), this answer is trying to get you to think about the amount of coffee consumer. Again, though, without knowing about the overall impact of dark roasts on the stomach, we don't know if the amount will matter!

(E) Out of scope. The argument is about stomach irritation, not overall health.

Takeaway/Pattern:
In Evaluate questions, look for a question where answering it Yes/No has opposite effects on the argument.

#officialexplanation

[reginaphalange]

The explanation for (A) makes sense. Can you please explain more why (B) is wrong?
For (B), I thought it'd be reasonable to assume that an adverse effect on stomach functioning would irritate the stomach.
Perhaps (B) is wrong because NMP only suppresses acid production, rather than reduce acid. But then again, we don't know how much acid NMP suppresses. It may suppress not just be the amount caused by caffeine, but also other acid in the stomach, and therefore actually reducing the regular acid production in the stomach.

[JorieB701]

Question Type:
Evaluate

Stimulus Breakdown:
Caffeine irritates the stomach. Darker coffee roasts have a chemical that soothes the stomach. Therefore, darker roasts are better for your stomach than lighter roasts.

Answer Anticipation:
Darker roasts may have one thing in them that helps the stomach, but are there any other differences between them and lighter roasts that would have the opposite impact? The argument doesn’t state that to be true, so it'd be helpful to know. We also already know that caffeine can irritate the stomach, so an answer about increased caffeine levels in dark roast seems like a good bet.

Correct answer:
(A)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Right off the bat! If dark roasting coffee increases caffeine levels, maybe that balances out the chemical. If it doesn't, maybe the conclusion is a good one.

(B) Out of scope. The argument is about stomach irritation, not stomach functioning.

(C) Interesting. This answer choice is trying to get you to think that maybe people would drink more dark roast coffee, thus balancing out the caffeine vs. NMP. However, we don't know the relative level of caffeine in dark roast (that was only brought up in (A)), so this answer doesn't help.

(D) Similar to (C), this answer is trying to get you to think about the amount of coffee consumer. Again, though, without knowing about the overall impact of dark roasts on the stomach, we don't know if the amount will matter!

(E) Out of scope. The argument is about stomach irritation, not overall health.

Takeaway/Pattern:
In Evaluate questions, look for a question where answering it Yes/No has opposite effects on the argument.

#officialexplanation

Great explanation, thank you! But I'm still a little confused about D, here. I ended up getting to A, finally--(I record myself taking practice tests like a crazy person and I spent 2.5 minutes waffling between A and D! ).

I guess I just still haven't gotten to a place where I feel 100% certain about A over D. I eventually committed to A because it was talking specifically about the extended roasting time and its effect on caffeine content which, based on the stimulus, IS precisely what stimulates the production of the acid. But D was tempting, if they're more likely to drink more of the coffee, that might cancel out some of the supposed benefits. But I guess looking at it now, this is talking about those who SWITCH from light to dark and I just don't think that's 100% what we need here, right? The conclusion isn't: therefore, those who drink light should switch to dark. They're saying that the dark is preferable when you consider stomach irritation. And I guess we have no reason not to believe that even if they increased their consumption, that this would in any way mute the effects that are being discussed. I see it as, more roasting time, less acid production. So, even if they are increasing their consumption, the reduction in stomach acids could be decreasing along with it and, for all I know, the caffeine consumption and reduction of stomach acids by NMP could be a 1-1 inverse correllation. So, you can drink and drink as much as your little heart desires and the stated benefits will still hold?

Is this what's wrong with D? Did I answer my own question?

And I got rid of C because it was talking about the coffee containing less caffeine, and we have no reason to believe this is even happening. Is that an okay reason to get rid of it as well?

As always, thank you!!!!!

[mtd4mx]

What type of question is an "Evaluate" question? Sorry if I'm just missing it, but I've been looking through my LR book and haven't found an explanation.

[ohthatpatrick]

Evaluate questions are very rare, so they don’t merit a chapter in a book usually. They were somewhat common in the old days, but then there was a stretch where there would be 1 Evaluate question every four or five tests.

That said, they’ve been more common recently. It’s been about 1 per test in the last couple years.

They’re just Strengthen/Weaken, but the answer choices are posed as a question.

Sometimes the correct answer is a Yes/No question, and answering it in one of those two ways would Weaken.
Other times the correct answer is more open ended, and answering it a certain way would Weaken.
The correct answer should feel like a question that, if answered one way weakens and if answered the opposite way strengthens.

As to concerns about answer choices on this one …

(B) is irrelevant, because adverse effects on stomach function are out of scope when it comes to the conclusion. We’re only measuring whether dark irritates less than light.

Is an acid-irritated stomach and instance of “adverse effect on stomach function”? I don’t think so. The function of the stomach is to digest food, to break down food into usable molecules vs. waste. If we happen to have a tummy ache while that’s happening, it’s not having any effect on the stomach function.

Even if we DID think that an irritated stomach was one example of adverse stomach function, we would still criticize (B) based on its vagueness.

We would need it to ask something like, “Does a reduction in acid production in the stomach contribute to increased irritation of the stomach?”

(It would be weird for them to say this, though, since it would pretty much contradict the first sentence of the stimulus).

Choice (C):
The way Jorie was getting rid of this is the same as how Matt was getting rid of it in the #OE: does this hypothetical question relate at all to dark vs. light? No, unless we knew the relative caffeine content of dark vs. light, which we don’t.

Choice (D):
The “yes” answer is supposed to be the one that weakens. But it would be a really weak counterpunch.
Yes, AT LEAST ONE person who switched from light to dark started drinking more coffee. So MAYBE that one person irritated their stomach more by drinking more volume of a less acidic roast. But the YES answer to (A) affects all people who would drink dark.

Also, it seems like the conclusion is meant to be judged as an “all other things being equal” claim.

It's not saying, "if you drink light roast, you should switch to dark roast".

It's saying "if you're drinking caffeinated coffee, (whatever amount) of dark roast will irritate less than would light roast."

[JohnZ880]

I find myself missing these cause-effect questions on the modern tests way more than I usual on the older tests. I'm a bit stumped. How do I improve on these questions? Should I follow a certain formula/approach when I see cause-effect reasoning? I fear it's just a matter of it clicking or not on test day. I got (A) easily on blind review, it just didn't 'click' for me while taking the test.