LR Question 16 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: The caffeine in coffee stimulates the production of…
QUESTION TYPE: Argument Evaluation
CONCLUSION: Darker caffeinated coffee roasts will irritate your stomach less than light roasts.
REASONING: Caffeine in coffee produces more irritating stomach acid. But, dark roasts have more N-methylpyridinium (NMP), which lowers stomach acid production.
ANALYSIS: The argument has given us one difference between light and dark roasts. This single difference lowers stomach acid.
To evaluate the argument, we need to know if there are other differences that might favour light roasts.
___________
- CORRECT. This is highly relevant. The first sentence says caffeine produces stomach acid. If dark roasts have more caffeine, then maybe this counteracts the added NMP. In that case dark roasts would produce more stomach acid on balance.
- This sounds relevant, but from common sense you know the stomach already produces stomach acid even in people who don’t drink coffee. We don’t need caffeine to get the right amount of stomach acid. It sounds like caffeine gives us too much stomach acid. So unless NMP removes more than 100% of the acid produced by caffeine, there is no risk of not having enough acid.
- The stimulus didn’t talk about any coffee blends having less caffeine, so this isn’t relevant. It would only be relevant if one type of coffee roast had more or less caffeine than another.
- This sounds compelling, but “some” should be a red flag. It can be as little as “one”. So this answer could mean “one person who switched to dark roasts increased their consumption”. It’s also consistent with everyone else decreasing their coffee consumption. You have to interpret “some” at its least useful when evaluating an answer.
- This is relevant to assessing the effects of light vs. dark roasts in general. But, the conclusion was only about the effects these roasts have on stomach acid. So, other health effects aren’t relevant.
More Resources for Argument Evaluation Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Argument Evaluation questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers argument evaluation questions.
I got this one wrong because I immediately eliminated A as being irrelevant and chose B. I was unsatisfied with the choice, but figured it isn’t too out of the ballpark to suggest that if there is such an adverse effect, then that would irritate the stomach.
That the roasting time of coffee beans affects whether it is light or dark seems obvious now that I’ve done this question, but I had no idea that was the case when I first saw this one. That led me to immediately eliminate A as being irrelevant because I thought that the roasting time was a completely unrelated characteristic. Do you have any tips for how I could have still gotten this question right without such knowledge? I imagine I’ll encounter a similar issue going forward where the correct answer requires just a slight tidbit of external knowledge (that I don’t have) to get right.
Good question. A few tips:
1. Don’t *eliminate* an answer unless you have high conviction. “Bah, irrelevant” is not evidence to eliminate! Instead, pass on the answer as “unlikely” but one which you can revisit
2. If you are stuck, assume you missed something. Here, the passage in fact says that roasting time affects whether a bean is light or dark. So, no external knowledge was required, only rereading. The start of the second sentence links the darkness of roasts to roasting time
It is not a problem to miss details like this. We all do. What is necessary is the instinct for realizing we *must* have missed something, and finding it