Q9 - Tea made from camellia leaves

[noah]

This is a weakener question, so let's find the core: regularly consuming camellia tea can result in heightened kidney damage. Why? Because regular drinkers are more likely to develop kidney damage.

Here we see an argument of causation, so we should look out for the possibility of a reversal of causation, that it could be another factor that causes both, or some other disconnect of the causation the argument suggests. For this one, perhaps camellia tea is often served with a triple shot of vodka, which is what causes the kidney damage. (E) suggests this very issue. The fact that (E) ambiguously uses "many" (which could mean various amounts), makes this a less strong answer than if it said "most" or "all", but it still opens the door to a third factor causing the kidney damage. Furthermore, the wrong answers do not weaken the argument at all:

(A) is out of scope - the addiction is not relevant to the kidney damage.
(B) is incorrect for the same reason.
(C) is irrelevant - what does alleviating stress have to do with kidney damage?
(D) is very tempting! Most of the folks who drink this tea do not develop kidney damage! But, even if only 49% of camellia tea drinkers are affected, this might be significantly more than the rate at which non-tea drinkers are affected.

Analogously, if most people who smoke do not get lung cancer, does it mean that it does not cause lung cancer? If only 5% of the non-smoking population get lung cancer, but 40% of smokers do, there's clearly a problem!


#officialexplanation

[LSAT-Chang]

Hi Noah!
If the conclusion had said: "always result" instead of "can result" would (D) be correct since we are presenting a case where it doesn't always result in risk of kidney damage (i.e. showing the cause without the effect)? But because the conclusion uses soft language and says that it CAN result in kidney damage, even if most people don't develop kidney damage, for the rest, it still CAN, right? And that's why it is incorrect? I was confused at first since I thought (D) was presenting the cause without the effect, and that is one way to weaken a causation statement, but I guess it all comes down to the word "can"...?

[goriano]

Hi Noah!
If the conclusion had said: "always result" instead of "can result" would (D) be correct since we are presenting a case where it doesn't always result in risk of kidney damage (i.e. showing the cause without the effect)? But because the conclusion uses soft language and says that it CAN result in kidney damage, even if most people don't develop kidney damage, for the rest, it still CAN, right? And that's why it is incorrect? I was confused at first since I thought (D) was presenting the cause without the effect, and that is one way to weaken a causation statement, but I guess it all comes down to the word "can"...?

I don't think changing the conclusion to "always result" would make (D) correct, because the conclusion is about a HEIGHTENED RISK, whereas (D) is about actually DEVELOPING kidney damage. So one could not develop kidney damage but still have a heightened risk of it. Could one of the LSAT experts weigh in on this?

[timmydoeslsat]

Hi Noah!
If the conclusion had said: "always result" instead of "can result" would (D) be correct since we are presenting a case where it doesn't always result in risk of kidney damage (i.e. showing the cause without the effect)? But because the conclusion uses soft language and says that it CAN result in kidney damage, even if most people don't develop kidney damage, for the rest, it still CAN, right? And that's why it is incorrect? I was confused at first since I thought (D) was presenting the cause without the effect, and that is one way to weaken a causation statement, but I guess it all comes down to the word "can"...?

I don't think changing the conclusion to "always result" would make (D) correct, because the conclusion is about a HEIGHTENED RISK, whereas (D) is about actually DEVELOPING kidney damage. So one could not develop kidney damage but still have a heightened risk of it. Could one of the LSAT experts weigh in on this?

That's exactly right. Even if most people who are regular drinkers of camellia tea do not develop kidney damage...this does not weaken that this group of people is more at risk than others.

[nflamel69]

Is this a true causation argument? I thought the conclusion was still somewhat correlational rather than causation, thats why I eliminated D. If the conclusion was that regular consumption of the tea does result kidney damage, then D would work perfectly.

[timsportschuetz]

Answer choice (D) is incorrect because the arguments conclusion is of very weak nature - it states that "regular consumption of this tea, therefore, CAN result in a HEIGHTENED RISK of kidney damage."

This is an EXTREMELY common LSAT trap and you should familiarize yourself with it. In WEAKEN, STRENGTHEN, FLAW, and NECESSARY/SUFFICIENT ASSUMPTION questions, it is often the case that the conclusion is not of categorical nature. Since the stimulus has a WEAK causal conclusion, it is inherently true and fully inferable that some/most people may and/or may not develop kidney damage! Thus, any answer choice that simply states an allowed exception to the weak conclusion MUST BE INCORRECT. If the stimulus concluded "Regular consumption of this tea, therefore, results in kidney damage", answer choice (E) would be correct.

Another important and common LSAT trap is the scope shift from conclusion to incorrect answer choices. Notice how the stimulus refers to a "heightened risk of kidney damage". Risk of kidney damage developing and actually having kidney damage are two completely different ideas! Think of it this way: If we conclude that "race car drivers, therefore, have a higher risk of being involved in a race-related fatality". A common and extremely attractive incorrect answer choice will state: "many/some/most race car drivers do not die in race-related accidents". This has ZERO impact on our original conclusion! The conclusion specifically talks about an elevated RISK of death occurring. Even though some race car drivers do not die due to racing, DOES NOT mean that they don't have a higher risk of being fatally injured.