Q14 - Activist: Medical conditions such as cancer and birth

[ohthatpatrick]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Flaw

Break down the Stimulus:
Conclusion: Only way to significantly reduce incidence of cancer/birth defect is to halt industries that produce water pollutants like dioxins and mercury.
Evidence: Cancer/birth defects have been linked to water pollutants like dioxins and mercury. Cancer/birth defects are generally incurable, so the only way to reduce their incidence is to prevent them.

Any prephrase?
The biggest assumption is that "the ONLY way to significantly prevent cancer/birth defects is to stop industries from producing dioxin/mercury". The author is of course assuming that industries currently DO produce these things and assuming that these pollutants DO find their way into our water supply as a result of these industries. But the absurdly strong/narrow vision of the conclusion makes this easy to fight. All we have to do to win our case is to show that there is at least one other effective way to significantly reduce the occurrence of cancer/birth defects (via prevention).

Correct answer:
A

Answer choice analysis:
A) Would this weaken? YES! It sounds like it's giving us the possibility of other ways to significantly prevent the occurrences of cancer and birth defects.

B) Would this weaken? Not at all. In fact, if pollutants are also hurting nonhumans, it sounds like we have an even more urgent call to arms.

C) Did the author need to assume this? The author STATES, not assumes, that cancer/BDs (certain effects) can be produced independently by several different causes (dioxin, mercury, and other pollutants). And the author's jump from "in order to reduce cancer/BD, we MUST target industrial pollutants" sounds more like the opposite of this answer choice.

D) Would this weaken? Maybe. It sounds like a way out of the Conclusion. But is it accurate to say that the author FAILED TO CONSIDER this? If the author believes that these industries would not satisfactorily comply with strict regulations, then the author presumably already holds the position that these industries would not voluntarily comply. It's kinda like if I said, "Ben wouldn't even do that for $1000", am I failing to consider whether "Ben would do that for free"? Probably not. It sounds more like you can infer from my first claim that "If I don't think he'd do it for $1000, he's obviously not going to do it for free."

E) Would this weaken? No, we don't care about potential benefits. We're trying to reduce the occurrence of cancer/BD. Halting industries that produce these pollutants sounds like ONE way. The author concludes it's the ONLY way. That's the reasoning move we're addressing.

Takeaway/Pattern: Sometimes the secret to beating a Flaw problem is simply to notice the extreme tone of its conclusion. It's easier to win a debate when your opponent stakes out an extreme position. To disprove that "the ONLY effective way is halting industries", we only need to point to one other effective way. (A) and (D) both take us in that direction, and (A) takes us farther in that direction.

#officialexplanation

[laura.bach]

Question Type: Flaw

Premise:
1. Cancers/birth defects are incurable --> prevention is the way to stop them.
2. They're linked to pollutants in the water.

Conclusion: The only way to reduce significantly their overall incidence is to stop industries known to produce these pollutants.

The notable flaw is the big leap from cancer / birth defects being linked to pollutants in the water, and eliminating these pollutants as the only way to prevent cancer / defects. What if cancer / birth defects are also linked with smoking cigarettes while pregnant?

Answers:

A: Correct answer - Fails to rule out that there are other ways to make a significant dent in the incidence of cancer/birth defects that don't have to do with industrial pollutants. We haven't established that industrial pollutants really are the ONLY way to significantly reduce these defects.

-----

B: "Nonhuman species" is irrelevant to the conclusion. The conclusion and the premises are both appropriately limited to humans. If anything, considering this could only strengthen the conclusion, not weaken it.
C: This is the opposite of the argument. Takes for granted that certain effects (read: Cancer / Birth Defects) can be produced by several different causes. Nope! The argument says there is only one cause: industrial pollutants!
D: Tempting. If they're unlikely to comply with regulations, maybe we don't have to necessarily ban them, maybe they would just reduce emission out of the kindness of their hearts

The problem is we're not sure to what extent industries would voluntarily decrease their emissions. Even if industries would voluntarily decrease their output, would they decrease the output enough to significantly reduce the overall incidence of cancer / birth defects?

Maybe yes, maybe no. The stem seems to imply "no" because they are unlikely to comply with strict regulations. Either way, in order to justify this answer you would have to assume that:
1. They would decrease their output of pollutants
and
2. This decrease would be large enough to reduce significantly the overall incidence of cancer / birth defects.

That's one assumption too many, especially with A in the mix.

E: Beneficial effects are irrelevant to the conclusion. The conclusion only cares about preventing the negative effects.

[ohthatpatrick]

Bravo!

I may have to post an official explanation, just per our protocol, but you crushed it!

[ljr315]

I understand why A is a correct answer, but don't understand why (C) is incorrect. Isn't (C) saying the same thing is A? That there could be other causes that produce certain effects (cancer?)?

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, the ideas in (A) and (C) are similar, but the prefix language to the answer choice is opposite.

That's why the two previous explanations have said that (C) is the OPPOSITE of what we want.

"if true, this would WEAKEN" prefixes
fails to consider
neglects the possibility
ignores the possibility

"the author NEEDED to ASSUME this" prefixes
takes for granted
presumes, w/o justification,
assumes, w/o warrant,
fails to establish
neglects to specify


Name the flaw in this argument:
Johnny is a doctor. Thus, Johnny must be rich.

(A) fails to consider the possibility that not all doctors are rich.

(C) takes for granted that not all doctors are rich.

It would be (A).

ONE MORE TIME
Name the flaw in this argument:
Johnny is a doctor. Thus, Johnny must be rich.

(A) fails to consider the possibility that all doctors are rich.

(C) takes for granted that all doctors are rich.

Now it would be (C).

[seychelles1718]

My question is not really relevant to this particular argument but more about test-taking skills. Should I have picked A and moved on as soon as I realized A weakens the argument or should I still read all 4 answer choices?

[ohthatpatrick]

That's a tough answer because it's dependent on a bunch of stuff.

There are certain question types (Main Conclusion, Sufficient Assumption, Determine Function, Match the Reasoning) where you could be so sure of what you're looking for that you trust yourself to move on once you've found it.

And that can certainly happen on Flaw questions too, but I would only suggest being that aggressively confident if you had a pre-phrase and found an answer that aligns with it.

There are 2 or 3 examples of Flaw questions in which there IS a "fails to consider" type answer that DOES weaken (somewhat), but it's not the correct answer because it doesn't really speak to the reasoning problem with the overall logic.

Sometimes reading all 5 is worth it, just to make sure we haven't accidentally misunderstood or talked ourselves into a wrong answer. If you see another answer that's hard to get rid of, you may have to do more analysis.

So ultimately, it's kinda all about knowing who you are as a test taker and how confident you are in the answer you're picking.

If it's like, "My instincts are usually right ... this is what I was looking for ... I know this works!", then sure move one.

If it's more like, "Well, this sounds pretty good", probably check the others.

There are numerous examples in Inference questions where (A) sounds very tempting/appealing, and it's only by seeing another contender down the line that we would revisit (A) and figure out why it was technically wrong.

(And in the case of question stems saying what would MOST weaken/strengthen, or why is this argument MOST vulnerable to criticism, it's always possible that an answer farther down the line is more powerful than the one we're considering)

[seychelles1718]

Thank you for your help, Patrick!

I have another question though... would you say the logical relationship between the support and conclusion shown in the last sentence quite strong?

P: Industries are unlikely to comply adequately with strict environmental regulations
C: The only effective way to reduce significantly their overall incidence is to halt industries known to produce these pollutants

During the test, I incorrectly focused on the relationship between those two ideas and debated by saying, "just because industries are unlikely to comply with laws, why do you have to completely stop them? Isn't it quite extreme?"

But upon review, I guess if industries don't comply with laws, it's highly unlikely that other methods will be effective to make them reduce their output of pollutants. I'd appreciate your feedback. Thank you.

[ohthatpatrick]

I also focused on that same link. You were correct to consider that an issue.

We ended up having blinders to what the actual answer was going to be, because we were thinking,

"Hey .... there might be OTHER effective ways to reduce the harm of pollutants from industries."

And LSAT was thinking more broadly about

"Hey ... there might be OTHER effective ways to reduce the incidence of cancer and birth defects."

Our alternative methods would certainly still qualify as an objection. We just had narrowed our focus a little too much.

If (A) said,
(A) fails to consider the possibility that industries known to produce these pollutants may be willing to significantly reduce production if they were rewarded with some financial incentives

.... it would still be correct. It would provide some OTHER effective way to achieve a significant reduction, besides just halting the industries.