Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Easy

PT122 S4 Q2 Explanation

Eating garlic reduces the levels

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

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Stimulus

Eating garlic reduces the levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood and so helps reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Evidence that eating garlic reduces these levels is that a group of patients taking a garlic tablet each day for four months showed a 12 percent reduction in cholesterol and a a 2 percent reduction in triglycerides and a 3 percent reduction in cholesterol.

What this question is testing

Evaluate

The Argument

One group took garlic tablets for four months and saw big drops in cholesterol and triglycerides. A similar group took fake tablets and saw much smaller drops. Conclusion: garlic is doing the work.

Evaluate

To say garlic caused the difference, we need to rule out other explanations. The biggest one is diet — what people eat directly affects cholesterol and triglycerides. If one group happened to eat much healthier than the other, that could be doing the work, not the garlic tablets.

It is like a vitamin study where one group also happened to start exercising. You cannot tell whether the vitamin or the exercise made the difference.

Goal

The right answer is the question whose answer would either confirm the groups had similar diets (strengthening the garlic claim) or reveal they ate differently (gutting it).

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The question
2.

It would be most important to determine which one of the following in

Answer choices

  1. Out of Scope0% picked this

    whether the garlic tablets are readily available to

    Whether the garlic tablets are available to the public has nothing to do with whether they actually work. Availability is a separate question — the argument is about whether garlic causes the reductions, not whether people can buy it.

  2. Correct91% picked this

    what the diets of the two groups were during

    Why this is right

    This is the make-or-break question. Diet has a strong, direct effect on cholesterol and triglyceride levels. If both groups ate similarly, the bigger reductions in the garlic group are reasonably attributed to the garlic. If the garlic group happened to eat much healthier than the control group, the diet difference could explain the gap and the garlic conclusion collapses. The answer to this question would tell us whether to trust the conclusion.

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

  3. No Impact7% picked this

    what effect taking the garlic tablets each day for a period of less than four months had on the

    The study lasted four months and produced its result. Whether shorter durations would have produced similar results does not affect what happened in this study. The conclusion is based on the four-month finding; what would have happened over six weeks is a different study.

  4. Out of Scope1% picked this

    whether large amounts of garlic are well tolerated by

    Tolerance of large amounts of garlic is a safety question, not an effectiveness one. The argument is about whether garlic reduces cholesterol and triglycerides — and the study used tablets, suggesting modest amounts. Whether large amounts cause side effects in some patients does not affect whether the studied amount produced the studied effect.

  5. Out of Scope0% picked this

    whether the manufacturer of the garlic tablets cites the study in

    The manufacturer's marketing practices have no bearing on whether the garlic actually worked in the study. Whether or not the manufacturer cites the study in advertising is a fact about marketing, not biology.

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