QUESTION TEXT: Advocate: A study of people who had…
QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning
CONCLUSION: Cold medicine makes your cold last longer.
REASONING: People who took cold medicine had worse cold symptoms.
ANALYSIS: The advocates makes a really stupid causation/correlation flaw. Whenever there you see a correlation on the LSAT, you should remember that there are four possibilities:
- Cold medicine causes worse colds
- Worse colds make people take cold medicine.
- Some third factor both makes people sick and makes them take cold medicine.
- It’s a coincidence.
In this case, the second possibility should be an obvious possible explanation, but the advocate ignores it.
___________
- This didn’t happen. This is the flaw of taking belief as fact.
Example of flaw: Most people believe cold medicine is the work of the devil. So, it is the work of the devil. - This didn’t happen. Maybe you thought the argument treated the “advocate” as an expert? But, they weren’t relying on expert knowledge.
Example of flaw: This person says he is a doctor and asks for $8000 so he can give me vitamin pills. I better do it. - This is a different flaw. (Moving from a generalization to an individual)
Example of flaw: People are usually unimportant politically. So, this senator must be unimportant politically. - This is a sufficient/necessary flaw. This didn’t happen.
Example of flaw: You need to breathe to be an olympic medal winner. I can breathe, so I’ll be sure to win a medal! - CORRECT. This matches. The advocate ignores the possibility that having a bad cold is what causes people to take the cold medicine.
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