LSAT 149 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q5

LR Question 5 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Eating turmeric, a spice commonly found in curries…

QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen

CONCLUSION: Turmeric probably helps avoid Alzheimer’s.

REASONING: Indian people eat more turmeric than anyone else does, and they have much less Alzheimers. Also, curcumin in turmeric helps break up the amyloid proteins found in Alzheimer’s disease.

ANALYSIS: This seems like a decent argument. We can strengthen it by showing a more direct link between either of the two reasons and Alzheimer’s reduction. We could also eliminate the possibility that some other factor in India causes the low incidence of Alzheimers.

___________

1. This weakens the argument! It shows Rosemary and ginger may be the actual causes of Alzheimer’s reduction. Yes, these ingredients help via the same mechanism as curcumin. But nonetheless this answer muddies the waters. (It would be possible that curcumin isn’t present in sufficient quantities in turmeric to have an effect, but Rosemary and ginger are active enough to have an effect)
2. This weakens the argument: it shows that the reduction of Amyloid actually wouldn’t be expected to help prevent Alzheimers. The amyloid plaque/Alzheimers link was essential to the argument.
3. This weakens the argument. If people in India are younger, we would expect Indians to have less Alzheimers than people in older countries. So the fact that India has low Alzheimers isn’t actually evidence of much.
4. This answer is mostly neutral. Curcumin was enough on its own to plausibly fight Alzheimers. This answers adds nothing to that, nor subtracts anything. But we’re supposed to strengthen!
5. CORRECT. This makes the correlation between Alzheimers and turmeric more direct, and helps reduces the odds that it’s some other factor in India that reduces Alzheimers.
    
   E.g. suppose eating beef caused Alzheimers. Hindus don’t eat beef, so that would be the actual cause of the low rate. This answer reduces the odds of their being another factor like that, because it shows the correlation between turmeric and Alzheimers reduction happens even within India. (correlations within a group can be more persuasive than correlations between groups, as correlations within a group help control for other differences.)

Recap: The question begins with “Eating turmeric, a spice commonly found in curries”. It is a Strengthen question. Learn how to master LSAT Strengthen questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.