Q6 - It is widely believed that

[LSAT-Chang]

I was down to (A) and (D) and picked (A) because we are looking for the main point = conclusion. The conclusion I found was in the middle of the stimulus that says, "however, it is likely that common wisdom has mistaken an effect for a cause" so I thought (A) "people are mistaken who insist that whenever they eat large amounts of chocolate they invariably suffer from an outbreak of acne" was perfect rephrase of that. I thought (D) had too much of a soft-language that says "less likely" because the conclusion says that that is MISTAKEN.

[maryadkins]

The conclusion I found was in the middle of the stimulus that says, "however, it is likely that common wisdom has mistaken an effect for a cause" so I thought (A) "people are mistaken who insist that whenever they eat large amounts of chocolate they invariably suffer from an outbreak of acne" was perfect rephrase of that.

Careful--(A) doesn't restate the conclusion. You're exactly right in ID'ing the conclusion, but (A) is saying nothing about cause or effect. (A) says merely that people who say they have acne at the same time they're eating chocolate are wrong. They don't have to be wrong for the conclusion to be true--the conclusion just means that the chocolate isn't causing the acne, but that the chocolate and the acne might be caused by a third factor, stress.

(B) is the opposite of what we want.
(C) is also inconsistent with the actual conclusion.
(E) is not the conclusion.
(D) is right. If it is likely that the "chocolate causes acne" argument is wrong, that means that argument is LESS likely to be true than the alternate possibility. Make sense?

[schwingrocker]

I also picked A. Is asking for the main point different than asking for the conclusion?

[bluemoon3423]

i picked A.

i believe is it wrong because the language is too strong. it asserts that people are mistaken. this means 100% wrong.

meanwhile, the stimulus says likely. i dont think likely means 100%. so D seems a perfect fit. kind of a curve ball so early in the section,

[BaopuZ34]

I also picked A, but even after I read the explanation for this question, I still feel a little confused.

Obviously, even if we find a possible alternative explanation (stress) for the acne, it does not mean that chocolate is not the real cause. Neither stress nor chocolate has been checked carefully so that we can reach the conclusion(I would prefer to say that the stress hypothesis weakens the chocolate theory rather than refute it totally). As a result, the word "less likely" in answer D is acceptable.

However, A is not wrong as well. Although we can not deny the possibility that the chocolate is still the real cause, at least the way the common wisdom used to reason the answer is wrong. Or change my words, yes, the chocolate may be the right answer but you just can not conclude causation from correlative statistics. The result may be right or wrong, but the way you reason must be wrong. From this perspective, I feel A is still a tempted one.