Q8 - The proportion of fat calories in the diets of people w

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Reading nutrition labels promotes healthful dietary behavior.
Evidence: [correlation] People who read labels more likely to have low fat diets.

Answer Anticipation:
There is a Missing Link. The author assumes that "lower proportion of fat in your diet" = "healthful dietary behavior".

But Missing Links are almost always red herrings when the argument contains some Correlation -> Causality move. We always react to causal arguments with the same 2 prongs:
1. OTHER WAY to explain background fact?
2. Plausibilty of AUTHOR's WAY?

One of the two most common OTHER WAYS to explain a correlation is to say that maybe the author has reversed cause and effect. Maybe having healthful dietary behavior / seeking out information about fat ---is causing --> more reading of the labels.

The other most common OTHER WAY to explain a correlation between X and Y is to say that there's some third factor, Z, that mutually explains X and Y.

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Yes. It doesn't get more boring and simple than that. When an answer choice says "infers ___ from ___", the thing being inferred should match the CONC and the "from" should match the PREM. The author's conclusion does indeed infer a cause ("this thing PROMOTES that thing").

(B) This describes the ol' Sampling Flaw. However, there's no sample even mentioned here. Presumably, the author didn't go around Earth and tally up ALL humans in terms of whether they do or don't read food labels, but we don't know how big the sample was or who it was, so we have no grounds to say they're likely to be unrepresentative.

(C) This describes the ol' Conditional Logic flaw. However, there's no conditional logic in the argument.

(D) If anything, the author takes for granted that "there is only ONE" explanation for a phenomenon. That would be another way of describing the correlation to causality move. I have no idea what two alternative explanations they're even alluding to.

(E) Does this match the Core? Is the conclusion about the "intentions of a group of people"? No. It's about the causal effect of reading a food label. The conclusion sounds more like it's about the "consequences of their behavior".

Takeaway/Pattern: The correlation in the argument has the familiar feel of "people who ARE X are more likely to be ____ than people who ARE NOT X." The causal word in the conclusion is "promotes". The correct answer choice simply describes the illicit move of inferring causality on the basis of a mere correlation. Correlations STRENGTHEN the idea that there's a causal relationship between X and Y, but they don't PROVE a specific causal relationship like "X promotes Y".

#officialexplanation

[rinagoldfield]

Check out my take on question 8 in the diagram attached below.