Few, if any, carbonated beverages

Answer choices

1. A

   Correct47% picked this

   Teenagers who drink large quantities of carbonated beverages containing caffeine tend to drink smaller quantities of calcium-rich beverages

   Why this is right

   This gives us a Third Factor alternate explanation. It's not the caffeinated soda that's causing these teens to have lower calcium and more brittle bones than their peers, it's the fact that they drink smaller quantities of calcium-rich beverages. You have teens drinking Mountain Dew, and other teens drinking milk. This answer is saying that the primary reason the Mountain Dew kids have more broken bones isn't that their MTN Dew drains their calcium but rather that they didn't have a milk-boosted supply of calcium to start with. Technically, we know the caffeinated soda drinking still contributes to lower calcium, but we now have a way to argue it's not the primary reason for their broken bones.

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

   47%
2. B

   Wrong Comparison29% picked this

   Teenagers engage in the types of activities that carry a high risk of causing broken bones much more often than both

   For this to be out answer it would need to say "Teenagers who drink caffeinated sodas engage in more broken bone activities than those who don't."

   29%
3. C

   Too Weak12% picked this

   Some teenagers have calcium deficiencies even though they do not consume

   The word "some" is wrong at least 90% of the time you see it in Strengthen, Weaken, Paradox since it's so weak. This says that there is at least one teenager who has a calcium deficiency even though they don't drink coffee. Cool. His name is Jeff, and he's sitting right here. "Sorry, Jeff, but you're irrelevant to this argument". Arguments about correlations and averages leave plenty of room for exceptions, but LSAT always writes this type of trap answer to bait people into objecting, "But that's not true 100% of the time!" You're right, but the author agrees with you. The author never said it was 100% of the time.

   12%
4. D

   Irrelevant Comparison: popularity Too Weak1% picked this

   Some of the less popular carbonated beverages contain even more caffeine than the

   This is again super dubious given that it says "Some". There's no impact on this argument by saying, "There is at least one less popular caffeinated soda that has even more caffeine than more popular ones". How does that help us argue that caffeinated soda is not the primary reason that teens who drink caffeinated have a higher rate of broken bones? Saying that "some brands have even more caffeine" doesn't allow us to think "oh, the brands that the teens are drinking don't REALLY have caffeine".

   1%
5. E

   No Impact10% picked this

   The more calcium a person ingests as a regular part of his or her diet, the more calcium that

   The more water I drink, the more I'll pee. What does this have to do with assessing the putative causal connection between caffeinated soda and broken bones? The people who make more money, spend more money, but they still end up with more money than the person who was low on money to begin with. So people who eat more calcium excrete more calcium, but still end up being someone with higher calcium (we assume).

   10%