These days, drug companies and

Answer choices

1. A

   Relative vs. Absolute One-Claim Trap13% picked this

   If a person has low blood cholesterol, then that person’s risk of fatal heart

   This sounds sort of like the 2nd sentence, which should make us scared to pick it. The correct answer on Inference questions almost never just re-states one claim. Instead, it is almost always derived by combining two or more claims. The 2nd sentence is interpreted in a Relative way. You might be a regular long-distance runner in excellent health with a low risk of heart disease. If you start increasing the cholesterol in your blood, you will increase your risk of heart disease, but that doesn't mean you're suddenly at a high risk (in Absolute terms). Similarly, someone who smoke and drank liquor all their lives and doesn't exercise would have a very high risk of heart disease. If they reduce the cholesterol in their blood down to a low level, that would lower their risk of fatal heart disease, but it wouldn't mean that their risk of fatal heart disease is low in absolute terms. As an analogy, we could say, "the less stuff you put on the roof of your vehicle, the lower its overhead clearance is when driving through tunnels". But that doesn't mean, "If a vehicle has little on top of its roof, its overhead clearance is low." After all, it could be a really tall vehicle to begin with. In both LR and RC, if the passage uses the Relative version of a word and an answer uses the Absolute version of that word, it will almost always be wrong (and vice versa).

   13%
2. B

   Too Strong1% picked this

   Smoking in moderation can entail as great a risk of fatal heart disease as

   Too Strong: as great a risk Out of Scope: moderate vs. heavy This presents an Unknown Comparison between moderate smoking and heavy smoking and counterintuitively says that moderate smoking is just as risky as heavy smoking, when it comes to fatal heart disease. We can't support that strongly worded comparison at all. If anything, we would think that a heavier smoker would have higher blood cholesterol and thus higher risk of fatal heart disease.

   1%
3. C

   Out of Scope: high-cholesterol diet4% picked this

   A high-cholesterol diet is the principal cause of death in

   The passage never talks about high-cholesterol diets at all. We know that heart disease is the principal cause of death in North America, and that cholesterol in the blood is heavily linked to heart disease. But we don't know if a high cholesterol diet is usually the reason for people having high cholesterol in their blood.

   4%
4. D

   Too Strong: the only way2% picked this

   The only way that smoking increases one’s risk of fatal heart disease is by influencing the levels of

   Just because "raising blood cholesterol" is the only way mentioned in this paragraph doesn't mean we can support the idea that smoking only impacts your risk of heart disease by impacting your blood cholesterol level. Maybe smoking also makes your lung functioning worse, so your heart has to work harder than it should to oxygenate your blood, which over time increases your risk of heart disease.

   2%
5. E

   Correct81% picked this

   The risk of fatal heart disease can be altered by certain

   Why this is right

   The soft language of "can be altered" is the primary reason why we'd try to fight for this answer choice. Did the passage mention certain lifestyle habits? Hmm, would we call smoking / drinking / exercise components of one's lifestyle? Sure, that seems fair. If we stopped smoking or stopped drinking or started exercising, that would seem to qualify as "a change in lifestyle". Could that alter our risk of fatal heart disease? Probably. After all, we know that these three factors influence blood cholesterol and blood cholesterol is tightly linked (Volume Dial relationships are the strongest possible form of correlation) to fatal heart disease / heart attacks. The Volume Dial relationship is not inherently causal. We could say, "the more birthdays you've had, the less of your lifetime remains" (depressing!) That doesn't mean that "having birthdays" is causing you to "have less life left". Both things are being caused by the unstoppable arrow of time. So why is LSAT cool with treating this Volume Dial as causal? 1) Partly, it seems to be just a little sloppy. This question stem should say Most Supported, and then it would be fine. 2) The first and third sentences contribute some context that makes it seem really likely that the relationship between blood cholesterol and heart disease is causal. The first sentence is saying that drug companies and health professionals are focusing on cholesterol in the blood (so it's implied that it would have some effect on health). The third sentence says, "the issue [of blood cholesterol's close link to heart disease] is pertinent since heart disease is the #1 killer". We probably wouldn't say that the connection between blood cholesterol and heart disease is pertinent unless we thought it was a causal connection. 3) Whether or not it's a causal connection, it's still given to us as a fact that "the less cholesterol you have in your blood, the lower your risk of fatal heart attack is". So if we know that changes to smoking / drinking / exercise could effect changes to your blood cholesterol, then according to the second sentence there would also be a change to our risk of fatal heart attack.

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

   81%