Q7 - Recently, a report commissioned

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: If you wait long enough, almost any food will be reported as healthful.
Evidence: Chocolate was once called bad; now they say it has health benefits. Oily foods were once called bad; now they say olive oil has some positive health benefit.

Answer Anticipation:
How would we object to this conclusion? It's a pretty loaded claim -- "almost ANY" food will eventually be called healthful? The author has presented two examples of foods whose perceived healthfulness seems to have changed over time, but why is the author assuming that would be true for almost any food? We could potentially describe this as a sampling flaw, because the author goes from evidence about two types of foods to a conclusion about almost all foods. Another thing we might pick on is the idea that chocolate / olive oil were ever really called "healthful". The fact that chocolate and olive oil have some positive influence on the body doesn't remove the fact that they also have negative effects. So it's not clear that food scientists are suddenly "changing their mind" about these foods. We could more moderately say that scientists are simply filling out the picture with the positive and negative aspects of a food.

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) The author isn't relying on the truth of these reports. She's only saying that almost any food that is one time claimed to be unhealthy will at some point be claimed to be healthy.

(B) There is no general rule in the evidence that could be applied in the conclusion. Instead, the author takes a couple specific cases and assumes a general rule in the conclusion.

(C) This seems fine. This speaks to the overstatement in the conclusion -- "almost ANY" food? The author has given us no reason to think that chocolate and olive oil are representative of most unhealthy foods.

(D) Red flag: extreme assumption. Does the author assume that ALL results of nutrition research are eventually reported? No. Why would the author care if at least one result of nutrition research was never reported?

(E) We can't weaken the author with a claim about the present, when her argument is that currently 'unhealthful' foods will eventually be called healthful.

Takeaway/Pattern: Sometimes the flaw just boils down to an author whose conclusion is much stronger than is warranted by his evidence.

#officialexplanation

[irini101]

I narrow down to A and C then choose A, I find both of them make some sense, is C correct because it states a major flaw while A states a minor flaw of the argument? Questions with very appealing contenders seldom appears so early in the section...

Could anyone please analyze A and C? Thanks in advance!

[kylelitfin]

Let's break down the stimulus:

Via a report by the confectioners trade associate: Chocolate was formerly thought to be bad for you, but we know now it acts as an antioxidant, so it has health benefits.

Oily foods allegedly clog arteries, but we know now that olive oil has a positive influence on our circulatory system.

Conclusion: If you wait long enough, almost any food will end up being reported as healthful.

There is A LOT wrong with this stimulus and logic. He uses a terrible analogy, takes liberties with the term "oily foods" and assumes that the one benefit that each of these foods provides is enough to trump the negative effects.

But aside from all of these logical gaps, the main one that sticks out is that conclusion takes all of these logical flaws and creates a overly ambitious global stance on food in general.

Let's take a look at the 2 choices you had to decide between:

A). "likely to be biased" should immediately make you discard this answer choice. How would you know this? Sure, the confectioners trade association could be biased, but there is nothing in the stimulus that would support this. Furthermore, the second point about oily foods does not state a specific source, it merely refers to an ambiguous "reports". This answer choice attacks the character of the CTA and an unnamed source.

C). Bingo. The conclusion takes two very weak examples about chocolate and oily foods and makes a very ambitious claim about "any food". The stimulus made a hasty generalization off of two examples.

Hopefully this helps! Happy studying!

[ssfriend.88]

I'd like to just walk through my answer eliminations briefly:

The argument makes a pretty outlandish claim regarding ALMOST ANY food, from just two examples. Seems like this is the gap I'm looking for.

A - Likely to be biased? I really have no information to back that up, and it doesn't fit my gap. Eliminate.
B - Kinda the opposite. We had specific cases that led to a general rule. Eliminate.
C - Bingo!! Broad generalization (all food eventually reported healthy) from few instances (2 examples of chocolate and olive oil).
D - Not entirely sure whether this is true or not actually, but isn't an issue that deals with the obvious flaw of the argument. Eliminate.
E - Actually it seems to be noting that some foods (maybe not many, so that is an issue too!) are unhealthy, the argument simply claims that eventually, even the unhealthy ones are found to be healthy. Not relevant, eliminate.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Nice discussion everyone and thanks ssfriend.88 for the run through of answer choices!

I'd like to add something on answer choice (A) though. The argument never relies on the truth of the claim that chocolate is healthy. Note that the conclusion of the argument isn't that these foods that were previously thought to be unhealthy are indeed healthy, but rather that they will be reported to be healthy.

If the argument had tried to prove that chocolate is indeed healthy from the confectioners trade association report, then answer choice (A) would be one to consider. I think it's reasonable to be suspicious of the confectioners trade association claim that chocolate is healthy - they clearly have something to gain.