Q13 - Commentator: The worldwide oil crisis

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
ID the Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: The worldwide oil crisis of 1973 was not caused by a real oil shortage, but instead was the result of collusion between international oil companies and oil-producing countries to artificially restrict the supply of oil to profit from higher prices.

Evidence: After 1973, the profits of oil companies and the incomes of oil-producing companies showed big increases.

Answer Anticipation:
Causation Flaw! Just because something had an effect doesn't mean it was undertaken in order to cause that effect.

Correct answer:
A

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Sounds a lot like our prephrase! And even if we didn't prephrase this, the argument definitely overlooks this potential objection. The fact that you benefited from something doesn't mean you helped to cause it. Deer benefit from hunting prohibitions on public lands but they didn't write the legislation!

(B) A common trap: When we conclude a relationship between a party and an event, we're not inherently assuming that they're they only party that has that relationship to that event. This argument is no exception. It establishes that two parties benefited, and it concludes that the two parties must have caused the event, but it doesn't assume that no other parties benefited.

(C) Equivocation! Equivocation Flaws, aka Ambiguous Word Usage Flaws, happen when 2 criteria are met. 1) A word has multiple meanings, and 2) the meaning has shifted over the course of the argument, but the argument proceeds as though the term was used consistently. The word "profit" is used first as a verb ("to profit from higher prices") and later as a noun ("the profits of oil companies"). But the verb "to profit" means "to make a profit." So, the fact that the countries and companies made a profit does imply that they profited. No shift in meaning has occurred.

(D) Why would the argument need to establish this? "Fails to establish" is equivalent to "assumes," so if you have any doubt as to whether this answer is correct, ask yourself "did the argument assume this?"

(E) This is closer to the opposite of what we need. This argument fails to consider the possibility that when one event precedes another, they may not be causally related.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Correlation vs. Causation gets tested frequently on the LSAT, but it's not the only flavor of Causation Flaw. Taking evidence that one thing caused another to mean that the first thing was intentionally undertaken to cause the second thing is a less-common flavor, but one worth recognizing, nonetheless!

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