The higher the average fat intake

Answer choices

1. A

   Unclear Impact2% picked this

   The differences in average fat intake between countries are often due to the varying makeup

   If differences in fat are just symptoms of different traditional diets, maybe there's some other ingredient in some of those traditional diets that is really the thing causing the cancer. This almost has the makings of an alternate explanation, except a couple things make it way too weak and vague: - "varying makeup" of diet doesn't give us any specific ingredient in the higher-fat traditional diets that we could now suggest is the real cause of cancer. We would just be totally speculating that within these varying diets there is a carcinogenic ingredient that isn't fat but is only / mostly present in high-fat diets. - this answer is creating a weak connection, since it's only saying that differences are often due to traditional diet. The correlation in the evidence we're trying to explain is much stronger than that, because it's saying "in all cases, the higher the fat, the higher the rate of cancer".

   2%
2. B

   Not a Common Sense Connection1% picked this

   The countries with a high average fat intake tend to be among the wealthiest

   This answer is phrased more strongly than (A), since "tend to" is more than 50% whereas "often" does not have to be more than 50%. Since high fat is linked to wealth, we could potentially say that wealth, not high fat, is the real cause of the elevated cancer rate. But that strains common sense. If we asked 10 people on the street, "does being wealthy increase your risk of cancer", it doesn't seem like we'd get more than 5 saying "of course".

   1%
3. C

   No Impact Relative vs. Absolute39% picked this

   Cancer is a prominent cause of death in countries with a low

   This answer is attractive to people because it seems to pair up Low-Fat with High-Cancer. But it's not conflicting with the correlation we were given. Cancer is a prominent cause of death in every country. (it's probably the #2 cause of death behind heart disease) "a prominent cause" just means "significant / important". It doesn't mean #1 cause of death. So the author wouldn't blush to hear that in countries with low fat intake, cancer is a significant cause of death. The author was never thinking that countries with low fat intake didn't have lots of cancer. He just said they had less cancer than countries with high fat intake.

   39%
4. D

   Correct53% picked this

   The countries with high average fat intake are also the countries with the highest levels

   Why this is right

   This provides a strong (seemingly perfect) correlation between higher fat and higher environmental pollution. So we could potentially say that it's not the high fat causing cancer, it's the environmental pollution. Is that a common sense causal link? If we asked 10 random people, "Does environmental pollution increase your risk of cancer?", we would probably get a bunch of people saying, "Yes". So this answer provides a Third Factor alternate explanation. The reason fat and cancer are correlated is because environmental pollution is correlated with fat and causes cancer.

   Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   53%
5. E

   No Impact5% picked this

   An individual resident of a country whose population has a high average fat intake may have a diet

   This doesn't look like a tempting answer for Strengthen / Weaken / Paradox, since it's so weakly worded. By using the expression "something may be true", it's just saying it's possible something happens at least once. The correlation we're given is averaging together the whole population, not saying they're identical in terms of fat intake and cancer risk. So it doesn't offend the author to hear that some data points don't conform to the average.

   5%