Q22 - A recent study revealed that people

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Weaken (phrased like Flaw, but everything's prefaced by "fails to consider")

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Standard recs for avoiding infection from meat-pathogens must be counterproductive.
Evidence: Ppl who follow standard recs are more likely to actually get infections from meat-pathogens than those who don't.

Answer Anticipation:
This is a classic Correlation -> Causality flaw. The author infers, from the correlation between "ppl who follow recs" and "ppl who contract diseases" that following the recommendations is CAUSING them to be more likely to contract the diseases. When an author sees that X and Y are correlated and assumes/concludes that X causes Y, we always consider two common alternative interpretations:
1. Maybe Y caused X (maybe having a history of contracting these diseases has led these people to now become people who follow the recs)
2. Maybe there's some third factor Z accounting for the correlation (maybe people on chemotherapy are therefore more likely to contract diseases and their doctors heavily emphasize following the standard recs).

Correct Answer:
E

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) We're only talking about meat-based pathogens, so it's irrelevant whether these pathogens exist elsewhere.

(B) Cool. But many people DO precisely follow all the recs, and they're more likely to contract diseases, and we and this author are trying to figure out why that is.

(C) "Not all" = weak language alert. Who cares if "at least one microorganism disease does not have readily recognizable symptoms"?

(D) Are the "standard" recommendations "the appropriate set" of recommendations? We don't know. The correlation and the author suggest maybe not. There's no way to apply this answer since we don't know what is an "appropriate set" of recs.

(E) YES! Here's the ol' Reverse Causality answer. Y came first. They were already susceptible to meat-based infections, and THAT causes them to follow all the standard recs precisely.

Takeaway/Pattern: Any time the author's conclusion is Causal, we think
1. Is there some OTHER WAY to explain the background fact
(the 2 most common ways are Reverse Causality, Y caused X, and Third Factor, Z accounts for the correlation between X and Y)
or
2. What circumstantial facts would support/undermine the AUTHOR'S WAY

(most common way is Covariation -- more examples of cause/effect going hand in hand or not)
#officialexplanation

[JohnZ880]

I put (E) when PTing, but was a bit thrown off by A. I didn't think the wording in the stimulus restricted these specific pathogens to only meat.

"...avoidance of infection by pathogenic microorganisms in meat-based foods are more likely to contract diseases caused by these pathogens..."

These pathogens are certainly in meat-based foods, but I don't see how the stimulus restricts their occurrence/availability to just meat-based foods. And since there are many pathogens in the real world that are in meat-based foods, but not only in meet-based foods, I assumed, rather safely I think, that the pathogens could have been in other foods, which would make (A) a pretty good critique in my opinion.

Obviously, I must be reading the stimulus wrong. Can someone explain how the grammatical construction in the stimulus limits the pathogens to just meat?