Q4 - Nutritionists have recommended that people

[backupbecool]

Perhaps it is the phrasing of the words or the odd format but I just didn't feel comfortable with this question. I eliminated the first three answers, and put D, but the answer was E.

[giladedelman]

I feel your pain! This is a somewhat peculiar question. Our job is to identify a statement that, if true, would make the advertising claim misleading in its focus. What is its focus? Well, the claim is that the supplement contains 44% fiber, so we're looking for a statement that makes it misleading to focus on the percent of fiber content in the pill.

(E) is correct. If the recommended intake is 20 to 30 grams of fiber a day, then a pill with 1/3 gram of fiber is pretty useless as a supplement -- no matter what percentage of it is fiber!

(This question reminds me of those "SnackWell" cookie commercials from the 1990s that tried to convince us that they wouldn't make you gain weight because they were low in fat. That emphasis was misleading because it's net calories, not fat grams, that make you fat!)

(A) is out of scope. We don't care about the other products out there.

(B) is out of scope. We don't care about the basis of the recommendation, we care about whether this ad is misleading.

(C) is wildly out of scope. It's possible to become addicted to "some kinds of advertised pills"? So?

(D) is a bit more tempting, but how does the instruction to take the pill thrice daily affect the claim that it contains 44% fiber?

Does that make things clearer for you?

[backupbecool]

Yes, thank you very much! I suppose the format of the question threw me off. And the odd wording.

[canylaw]

What type of question is this?

[cuong.fearlessboy]

Weaken the argument.

[charleneroche]

Hi what question type is question number 4? "The advertising claim is misleading in its selection of information on which to focus if which one of the following is true?"

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

It's phrased quite uniquely, but the task is clear. What could we add that undermines the advertisement. I'd label this one as Weaken.

[WaltGrace1983]

I'd add that what helped me eliminate (D) was the simple fact that the advertisement talks about one pill: "Advertisements for a new fiber-supplement pill state...". Just because we are supposed to take three pills does not at all affect the idea that the one pill is "44% fiber." Hence, (D) really doesn't do anything to the argument.

I guess the advertisement meant that 44% of the actual pill was composed of fiber .

[economienda]

By "one-third gram" does that mean 0.33 gram??

[WaltGrace1983]

By "one-third gram" does that mean 0.33 gram??

I'd assume so. It sounds like 44% of the pill is fiber but the advertisement would lead one to believe that this pill would constitute 44% of your daily dietary needs.

[uhdang]

Could anyone check where I made the mistake here? Thanks to giladedelman, I understood why E) is the answer, but still have some remaining + unresolved issue here..

I thought that D) could be interpreted in two ways depending on how you interpret "44 percent fiber."

1) is that it satisfies 44% of daily requirement of fiber intake.
2) the pill's 44% is fiber.

When looking at D), I thought that depending on which of two you choose to accept,

1) taking 3 pills a day could be to indicate consuming more than 100% (44 x 4 = 132)
2) taking 3 pills a day could indicate to reach more than 100% of the fiber pill...

Now that I wrote it out, it sounds a bit silly on my 2nd interpretation..

Then, assuming D) has been on the label, what would it be indicating? The first interpretation? Or is it just a gibberish? (giladedelman seems to think it's a gibberish, but I just want to hear what others think..)

[rinagoldfield]

Thanks for your post, uhdang,

We know how to interpret the claim because the premise says “it [the pill] contains 44% fiber.” This means that the pill itself has the fiber.
If we interpreted the 44% claim the other way (to mean that it contains 44% of the recommended amount of fiber), then (D) still wouldn’t be problematic, because it wouldn’t point to something misleading. You can’t take more than 100% of a pill, so it would just mean that you would be taking more than the recommended amount of fiber. But either way, this would be a misinterpretation of the stimulus.

--Rina

[veengeecomm]

Here's my issue with this question. The AC for E could be interpreted as having no effect on the ad. And here's why. When the ad states the pill is 44% fiber it doesn't state the weight of the pill. Maybe the 44% has nothing to do with daily intake and is merely the amount of the pill that is literally fiber. If the weight of the pill is just over 1 gram and the pill contains 1/3 of a gram of fiber than the advertisement is bang on the money.

Help how do I eliminate this possibility so I can choose e? Is it because of how E is worded with the daily recommended at the beginning and you're supposed to infer the rest? It is a poorly worded ambiguous question in my opinion and I struggled with the AC. (I chose E in the end because I saw the other possibility, but I wasn't particularly happy nor confident about the AC).

Thanks for any thoughts!

[soguledu]

I understood the stem "...the advertising claim is misleading in its selection of information on which to focus..." as that the advertising claim misleadingly focused on a particular part of their product, that the pill contains 44% fiber.

I can see why (E) could be right. However, I have difficulty seeing why (B) is wrong. If nutritionists based their recommendations on fiber's beneficial health effects on cancer, an effective advertisement would have mentioned that. Thus, the current advertisement, which only talks about percentage of fiber content, would be misleading.

Am I just doing mental acrobatics here? Any feedback would be much appreciated.

[a8l367]

Advertisiment: the pill contains 44% of fiber.
Answer: it's misleading because recommended intake is 20-30g and the pill condains 0.33g of fiber.

So why it's misleading?
For example: the pill weights 0.75g and contains 44% of fiber, which is 0.33g. For daily intake you need 20/0.33 = 61 pill.

So why the ad is misleading?

the onlyway it coulb be if stem means the pill contains 44% of fiber (of the recommended daily intake). But could we assume that meaning?