PrepTest 133

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Errors in Reasoning

Stimulus Summary:
Avoid fat in diet → Decrease chances of heart disease
Avoid dairy → Decrease chances of eating fat
Therefore - Avoid dairy → Increase chances of maintaining good health

Answer Anticipation:
The premises of this argument do connect avoiding dairy with decreasing the chances of heart disease, and heart disease is certainly one thing that can negatively affect your good health. However, it's not the only thing that makes up good health. If avoiding dairy or fat can cause other problems—problems that may be more serious than heart disease—then it might be the case that avoiding dairy can decrease overall health even while increasing the risk of heart disease.

Any answer highlighting this shift will be correct, but we'll have to be careful because this is question #18 and so the answers are likely to be tricky.

Answer Explanation:
While not directly stating that this is talking health, this answer abstractly describes the flaw. A practice—consuming dairy—has potentially negative consequences—increasing the risk of heart disease. However, in concluding that this means consuming dairy will hurt overall health, the argument ignores that dairy might provide health benefits that are more important than the decreased chances of heart disease—say by helping people to avoid osteoporosis. This answer gets at the shift between a subset of overall health to overall health, so it's the correct answer.

Key Takeaway:
When answer choices are given using abstract language that doesn't bring up the content from the passage, be sure to substitute that topic-specific language in to make sure that everything lines up. It's easy to get a question like this wrong because an answer sounds good until you try to get it to match with the logic in the stimulus.

Incorrect. The argument doesn't fail to consider that there is more than one way to avoid decreasing heart disease since it doesn't state that only by avoiding dairy can one see that benefit. What it fails to consider is that avoiding dairy might have other, beneficial health effects that balance out the negative heart ones.

Incorrect. The argument never actually makes a recommendation or states what should/ought to be done. It simply states that certain actions carry consequences—what someone does with that information is up to them.

Incorrect. While the argument does shift from premises about heart disease to a conclusion about good health, disease is by definition related to good health, so the argument doesn't need to establish that relevance.

Incorrect. The conclusion is about probability, so it's not ignoring this possibility.