PrepTest 130

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen

Stimulus Summary:
Correlation - Diet high in saturated fat and heart disease
Causation - Replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat lowers risk of heart disease
Conclusion - If you eat a lot of saturated fat, increasing unsaturated fat in your diet can lower heart disease risk

Answer Anticipation:
Strengthen questions tend to have correlation/causation flaws, so we should be on the lookout for language in these questions suggesting such a flaw.

We do get a correlative premise—people who eat a lot of saturated fat also have a higher heart disease risk. And we do get a causal conclusion—a dietary shift "can lower" their heart disease risk. This would normally mean that there's a correlation/causation flaw, and we should look for an answer that strengthens an argument with that flaw.

But this argument is a bit different—there's another premise, and that premise is causal. That second premise states that replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat "decrease[s]" the risk of heart disease. If one thing decreases (or increases) another, then the two are causally related. And since this causal relationship is related to the one in the conclusion, we don't have a correlation/causation flaw here.

Instead, we have a shift in terms here. The effect is the same in both causal statements—a decreased risk of heart disease. However, the cause is different. In the premise, it's replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat. In the conclusion, it's increasing the intake of saturated fat. Since this argument jumps between those two causes, we can strengthen it by connecting them—for example, by saying that people who increase their intake of unsaturated fat do so by cutting out saturated fat.

Answer Explanation:
This answer connects the cause in the premise to the one in the conclusion. If people who eat more unsaturated fat eat less food with saturated fat, then the unsaturated fat effectively replaced saturated fat in the diet, which is the cause of the reduced risk of heart disease established in the premise. By connecting the premise and conclusion, this answer strengthens the argument.

Key Takeaway:
Causal premises can support causal conclusions. When a causal conclusion is supported by a causal premise, the flaw is likely to be a term shift between either the cause or effect when brought up in the premise vs. the conclusion.

Incorrect. The conclusion discusses just the effects of a dietary change on risk of heart disease, so other health benefits are out of scope. If the argument had shifted from premises about heart disease to a conclusion about overall health, then this answer would be in consideration.

Incorrect. The argument has already established that one specific aspect of diet is a factor in heart disease, so this answer about diet generally being the "most important" factor doesn't add anything to the argument. If the conclusion stated that this dietary change would have the largest effect on heart disease risk, then this answer might be relevant.

Incorrect. Life expectancy is out of scope of the argument.

Incorrect. The difficulty of making a change has no impact on whether that change is effective.