December 1999 LSAT Section 4 Question 17

Researchers have found that people who drink five or more cups of coffee a day have a risk of heart disease 2.5 times...

avif on July 9, 2020

Explanation

I originally chose C and then I switched it to B. The reason was that I thought that the fact that there may be another factor which they did not discuss does not mean that they still went based on their findings to cut down their own consumption. B, on the other hand, gives an alternative reason for them to have cut back on their coffee drinking. Why is it incorrect?

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shunhe on July 10, 2020

Hi @avif,

Thanks for the question! So we’re told directly in the stimulus that the reason for the limiting of coffee intake is based on the findings. And remember, we can’t have answer choices that contradict what the stimulus tells us, so we can’t interpret (B) in the way that you seem to want to. So (B) doesn’t give them another reason to have cut back on their coffee drinking. And even if it did, then it doesn’t indicate that their cutting back might not decrease their risk of heart disease. (B) just tells us about what people overall are doing, and that’s completely irrelevant to this stimulus. For this reason, (B) is incorrect.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

avif on July 10, 2020

Aha. I just realized that I read the question wrong. I thought that it was saying which thing would lead us to believe that they didn't switch based on their results, where it was actually saying which thing would weaken the possibility that it would have any effect. Stupid mistake. Thanks for the response.

shunhe on July 11, 2020

Great, glad this helped!

hfatima1 on August 27, 2020

can someone please explain the stimulus and as to why C is the right answer?