June 2003 LSAT Section 1 Question 23

The fact that people who exercise vigorously are sick less often than average does not prove that vigorous exercise p...

lerondagates on October 11, 2019

Can someone explain why the answer is A?

I was stuck on this question because I did not fully understand the argument. Can someone break this argument down for me? The only thing I understand so far is that there is a correlation between exercising and preexisting health but really don't get how A is the answer. Thank you

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Irina on October 11, 2019

@lerondagates,

The argument is basically saying that we cannot conclude that A causes B - exercises causes less sickness because people that are healthy to begin with tend to exercise more, thus the relationship between the general state of health and exercise is bidirectional in a sense. (A) exhibits a similar pattern of reasoning. We cannot conclude that reading improves verbal skills solely based on the evidence that habitual readers tend to be verbally skilled because it is equally likely that having strong verbal skills encourages people to read more.