LR Question 15 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Researcher: Salmonella bacteria are a major cause of…
QUESTION TYPE: Paradox
PARADOX: One group of chickens received salmonella treatment, the other didn’t.
The group that received salmonella had less salmonella but more bacteria of other types.
ANALYSIS: Somehow, the salmonella treatment encouraged bacterial growth in the first group of chickens.
I couldn’t prephrase this question. I just kept the facts above in mind, and looked for a reason why salmonella treatment could lead to more bacteria. I quickly skipped over any answer that didn’t seem promising.
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- Who cares? The treatment could have taken 15 seconds or 15 days, and nothing would be different. The paradox is about what happened after the treatment.
- Who cares? The stimulus just said that salmonella levels are lower. That’s a relative term. If the starting salmonella level were 10%, then lower could be 9%. If the starting level were only 0.5%, then lower would be 0.4%. In neither case does the absolute amount of salmonella matter.
- The stimulus is not talking about adult chickens.
- This just makes the situation more confusing. The stimulus said that the untreated group had fewer non-salmonella bacteria. So why does the untreated group have more infections?
- CORRECT. This explains it. Salmonella prevents some bacteria from growing. Since the treatment removed salmonella, it makes sense that other bacteria were able to grow.
The “nonvirulent” part of this answer is irrelevant. The stimulus didn’t make a distinction between harmful and harmless bacteria. It just said the treated group had more bacteria, period.
More Resources for Paradox Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Paradox questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers paradox questions.
How does one assume that the “new treatment” specifically means that the treated group received salmonella. Aren’t there many treatments out there that can do the same thing without injecting more salmonella?
I’m not sure what you mean. Nowhere does it say that the chicks were injected with salmonella. What happened was that the group that had the new treatment had less Salmonella but later had more variety of bacteria. We don’t know what exactly the “new treatment” is, we just know what happened after the chicks received it.