lsat42010
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Q8 - We can now dismiss

by lsat42010 Sun Nov 14, 2010 7:30 pm

I picked D and I really don't understand why C is the right answer.
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Re: Q8 - We can now dismiss

by noah Mon Nov 15, 2010 12:46 pm

I'm happy to help. However, you'll need to go back and edit your title with the first few words so I know that we're talking about the same question.

Also, go ahead and explain your reasoning - you'll get a lot more out of this discussion if you do that.

I look forward to it...
 
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Re: PT 51, S1, Q8 - We can now dismiss the widely held suspicion

by cimani.w Mon Jan 17, 2011 1:53 pm

Hi,

I'm not understanding why C is the correct answer either. I chose "E," and thought that that would weaken the argument because if children belieev that they can tell the diff bet the taste of sugar and the substitue then they may be tailoring their behavior to the substitue because it isnt the real thing.... whereas, if they know they are having real sugar, they will behave differently, more excited, and more hyperactively... no?
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Re: PT 51, S1, Q8 - We can now dismiss the widely held suspicion

by noah Tue Jan 18, 2011 12:40 pm

Super - let's get into this weaken question. Since it's in the Assumption Family, let's get to the core: The conclusion is that we can dismiss the idea that sugar makes kids hyper. Why? Because a study showed that there's no difference in how sugar and splenda (sugar substitutes) affect kids.

[Note how I've boiled it down and taken some liberties - and while that can be dangerous if you forget you've done than and get tripped up by "erasing" modifiers, it can be very helpful in actually absorbing an argument.]

So, our core is:

study shows no difference betw. sugar and splenda affect on kids --> sugar doesn't make kids hyper

Put on your debaters cap. What would be your response?

Well, what if both sugar and splenda makes kids hyper? Then the study might actually support the idea that sugar makes kids hyper!

(C) brings up this possibility. It's a bit confusing, since it only refers to "some" sugar substitutes, but it opens the door to this large gap in the argument. Even if it were just a couple of sugar substitutes, this possibility seriously calls into question the validity (air-tightness) of the argument.

(A) is irrelevant - we're not interested in which sugars were widely suspected of making kids hyper. The question is whether the study can allow us to dismiss the theory.

(B) is perhaps tempting, but if anything this would strengthen the argument. Sugar doesn't make kids hyper - it calms them down! However, because it only does this for some kids, (B) doesn't have any effect, because "some" can mean 2 out of the entire world's population of kids (and thus not indicate a trend whatsoever).

(D) provides details of how the study was conducted. Sometimes this sort of info is helpful in supporting or weakening an argument that includes a study, but here this simply tells us that the study involved "some" observations that might make kids hyper. Again, "some" means "one or more," so this answer doesn't tell us much about what was generally happening. Plus, even if the kids were in a situation that makes them hyper, who is to say that the study could not determine if kids who had sugar were even more hyper? In other words, if the entire study were done in this manner, would it make it impossible to determine the effect of these sugars and sugar substitutes? Not necessarily - and it wasn't the entire study that was done in this way.

(E) may be tempting - perhaps, as the poster above suggests, if kids can tell the difference they'll act differently. However, you need to add in quite an assumption here (that the kids would modify their behavior based on this knowledge). There are some other problems with this: the kids "believe" they can tell, but can they? And again, it's "some" kids, so maybe that's 2.

It's interesting how "some" ends up being a problem for most of the wrong answers, but not for the correct one. The question is whether "some" representing a small number would still call into question the argument. With (C), it does.

Does that clear it up?
 
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Re: Q8 - We can now dismiss the widely held suspicion

by irene122 Tue Sep 20, 2011 4:56 pm

Thanks Noah! So "many/some/certain" mean more than one and are not strong enough to weaken/strengthen a conclusion concerning causality or correlation, is my understanding correct?

Choice with these three words in strengthen and weaken questions always seem tempting to me, I really need to clear up.

Thanks in advance!
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Re: Q8 - We can now dismiss the widely held suspicion

by noah Wed Sep 21, 2011 4:08 pm

Glad to help.

"Many" and "some" mean more than one, though "certain" in most contexts, means "always."

I wouldn't want you to walk away from this forum discussion thinking that you should never choose an answer with one of those words in it for a S/W question involving correlation/causation. It's possible for the LSAT to construct an answer using one of those words that most strengthens or most weakens.

But, if you're wondering if you can prove causation just because most of the time it occurs, you're right - you can't.
 
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Re: Q8 - We can now dismiss

by dean.won Tue Jun 04, 2013 12:58 am

Wouldnt A weaken since it questions the validity of the study? If only one of the sugars tested were responsible for hyperactivity wouldnt it mean they tested the wrong sugars thereby weakening the study?

I thought of it as most common sugars =/= sugars responsible for hyperactivity
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Re: Q8 - We can now dismiss

by noah Tue Jun 04, 2013 1:36 pm

dean.won Wrote:Wouldnt A weaken since it questions the validity of the study? If only one of the sugars tested were responsible for hyperactivity wouldnt it mean they tested the wrong sugars thereby weakening the study?

I thought of it as most common sugars =/= sugars responsible for hyperactivity

Does (A) say that only one of the sugars tested was responsible for hyperactivity?
 
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Re: Q8 - We can now dismiss

by logicfiend Tue Jul 07, 2015 2:21 pm

I hated getting this question wrong, now twice on my retake of this test!

I too eliminated (C) because of the "some" and thought it was pretty weak. Now I can see (D) is even weaker.

But looking past the "somes" in this question, something else just clicked for me that makes it very clear why C is the answer: the stim is assuming that sugar substitutes should be part of the control group. What if the control group is also messing up the data?

It seems really simple, but the other answers don't seem to say this explicitly, and it really helped clear up my thinking about this seemingly easy question. ARGH!