Columnist: Research shows significant | LSAT 73, Q9, LSATHacks

LR Question 9 Explanation, by LSATHacks

QUESTION TEXT: Columnist: Research shows significant reductions in the…

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: The evidence helps show that advertising does in fact influence smoking.

REASONING: Countries with smoking advertising restrictions have had great reductions in first time smoking.

ANALYSIS: This feels like a good argument, because we already tend to think tobacco advertising is bad. But actually, the author has just shown a correlation between smoking advertising restrictions and reductions in first time smoking.

Whenever there’s a correlation, there are four possibilities:

1. Restrictions reduce first time smoking.
2. Reduced first time smoking causes restrictions.
3. Some third factor causes both reduced first time smoking and advertising restrictions.
4. The correlation is random.

You can weaken the correlation by showing that one of the other four possibilities exists.

___________

1. This answer talks about an absolute term “unlikely”, whereas the stimulus was talking about a relative change “less likely”. You can be unlikely to quit, but still more likely to do so than before.
2. This is an irrelevant fact about the nature of the advertising restrictions. We care about the effect of the restrictions, not the legal fine print.
3. CORRECT. This is number three from the list above. If this is true, then it’s possible a third factor (negative attitudes towards smoking) are the cause of both the advertising restrictions and the reduction in first time smoking.
4. The stimulus was only talking about the number of first time smokers. It doesn’t matter what happens after people start.
   This answer also says nothing about whether advertising changes attitudes.
5. This is an irrelevant fact about advertising. For this to matter, we’d need to know what percentage of people are relatively unaffected by tobacco advertising. And other advertising doesn’t matter.