Q13 - One of the effects of lead

[enigma644]

I can understand why the answer choice might be A, since the evidence used to offer the suggestion that Van Gogh has lead poisoning is that he painted haloes. But, why can't B be correct? If the conclusion is that he likely had lead poisoning from eating paint, then wouldn't a necessary factor be that continued to eat paint with lead in it? It says that he painted haloes in his later paintings, which would be the ones after Sunflower, so he would have to continue to use paint with lead in it, otherwise his lead poisoning wouldn't be present.

Thanks.

[skapur777]

This is my unprofessional response.

A- Correct because if he didn't see some things as he painted them, then it could call into connection the supposed link between painting bright haloes and the side effect of lead poisoning of seeing bright haloes.

B is incorrect because he did not have to continue using lead paints after the Sunflowers painting. He could have just gotten lead poisoning around that time during that painting, and thus cause the inflammation of his optic nerve. The stimulus says nothing to the effect of having to continuously use lead paints in order to keep getting the optic nerve inflammation symptom and thus the assumption does not really destroy or weaken the argument.

C- irrelevant
D- also irrelevant
E- could be true but the fact of the matter is he DID use Naples Yellow.

[bbirdwell]

Thanks for the explanation skapur777!

Yes, (A) is correct because if he didn't paint things like he saw them, we have no reason to believe he saw halos, and therefore no reason to believe he had lead poisoning.

For (B), you're totally right -- we have no evidence to suggest that one must eat lead more than once in order to suffer the effects. It's plausible that he got poisoning during "Sunflowers," his nerve got inflammed, and it stayed that way for the rest of his life.

[roflcoptersoisoi]

I was able to confidently eliminate all the answers except (A) and (D). I ended picking the correct answer (A) by using the negation test, but was not able to eliminate (D), could someone explain as to why the latter is incorrect?

[rinagoldfield]

When an answer choice talks about something “other than [whatever the argument is about],” that is usually a good indication that the answer choice is out of scope. (D) in this case is indeed out of scope. We don’t need to know whether lead was the ONLY toxic ingredient here, only whether the lead caused Van Gogh to see haloes. Perhaps Van Gogh’s paint contained another toxic ingredient that led to indigestion and warts. That doesn’t affect whether the lead created the halo effect.

[PepitoH577]

The author doesn't say that we have to eat lead just once to get permanent optic nerve damage either. So I don't see that as a good justification for (B). I'm still confused why not B.