Q18 - Journalist: Scientists took blood samples from two lar

[mshinners]

Question Type:
ID the Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
PREMISE: Two groups: veggie-lovers, veggie-haters
Veggie-haters all have a gene in common
CONCLUSION: Dislike of veggies is probably genetically determined for some people.

Answer Anticipation:
This is a classic mistake pattern. Imagine if I told you that all US presidents had two eyes, so that proved that having two eyes caused one to be president. Hogwash, you'd say, everyone has two eyes! In other words, it's only significant that one group has a characteristic if the OTHER group DOESN'T have it.

Correct answer:
(E)

Answer choice analysis:
(A)  This argument certainly doesn't need ALL human traits to be genetically determined. The conclusion is actually fairly soft - it's only about this one characteristic (veggie-hating) and we only claim it's "probably" genetically determined "in some cases". 

(B) Since the conclusion isn't taking this small sample and making grand sweeping generalizations about the entire population, we don't care how representative it is. The conclusion is essentially just that veggie-hating is SOMETIMES genetically determined.

(C) This answer is incredibly tempting! There's a possibility even though one phenomenon (disliking vegetables) is always accompanied by another phenomenon (the gene), that the latter (the gene) could be present even when the former (dislike of veggies) is not. And that's the very overlooked possibility that would destroy this argument.

But I dropped a critical word from (C) in that paraphrasing - "produces"! For this answer to match, we'd have to be suggesting that the dislike of vegetables always PRODUCES the gene - and that's not the argument being made at all! (Nor would it make much sense.)

(D) This would be interesting IF the conclusion had tried to claim that veggie-hating is affected ONLY by this one gene, but the conclusion did not do that.

(E) Bingo. When an argument commits a Correlation/Causation flaw, it's ignoring the possibility that the group that doesn't have the effect might also have the purported cause (think about the president example above). This answer choice points out that assumption.

Takeaway/Pattern:
When comparing two groups, make sure that all relevant information is established. Here, the groups are compared over their feelings towards vegetables, but the argument only talks about the genes of one group. Information is needed about the genes of the other group to complete the comparison!

#officialexplanation

[DongheeK886]

I have selected E) because i liked E) better than C). I read the explanation presented here but still can't convince myself why C) is wrong. Can someone elaborate on why C) is absolutely wrong?

[allenkw90]

(C) This answer is incredibly tempting! There's a possibility even though one phenomenon (disliking vegetables) is always accompanied by another phenomenon (the gene), that the latter (the gene) could be present even when the former (dislike of veggies) is not. And that's the very overlooked possibility that would destroy this argument.

But I dropped a critical word from (C) in that paraphrasing - "produces"! For this answer to match, we'd have to be suggesting that the dislike of vegetables always PRODUCES the gene - and that's not the argument being made at all! (Nor would it make much sense.)

(D) This would be interesting IF the conclusion had tried to claim that veggie-hating is affected ONLY by this one gene, but the conclusion did not do that.


Hello. I have a question about answer choice (C).

I eliminated C for the reason you mentioned- the word "produces" rasied the red flag. But in terms of the two phenomenons mentioned in the answer choice, I interpreted the former phenomenon to be the genes, and the latter phenomenon to be the dislike of veggies.

So basically, I thought the answer choice was saying: It overlooks the possibility that even when XRV2G gene "produces" the dislike of veggies, the dislike of veggies may often be present ven if one does not have the XRV2g gene. I think this interpretation makes the answer choice quite tempting, but again, the word "produces" was ultimately the reason why I elimated it.

When an answer choice mentions numerous phenomenons, is there a way we match each one to a particular part of the stimulus or do I just need to make sense of it while reading the answer choice?

Thank you.

[ohthatpatrick]

"Produces" is a causal verb.

X produces Y would imply that X caused the effect of Y.

In this conversation, the author is only ever insinuating that genes cause veggie dislike, never that a dislike of veggies causes you to have a certain gene.

So you would definitely interpret "one phenomenon always produces another" as "having gene XRV2G always produces a dislike of veggies".

But whoa ... that's some extreme language. Did the author ever say that certain genes ALWAYS produced a dislike of veggies?

Not at all.

The author's conclusion is only that AT LEAST IN SOME CASES, your genes are producing a dislike of veggies.

I would never reach the second half of (C), because I wouldn't be able to match up anything in the argument with "One phenomenon always produces another phenomenon." so that would cause me to move on.

Hope this helps.