PrepTest 115, Section 4, Question 20
Some people believe that good health is due(35 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the argument(11 more words not shown)
- Apresumes, without providing(10 more words not shown)
- Boverlooks the possibility(13 more words not shown)
- Cpresumes, without providing(9 more words not shown)
- Doverlooks the possibility(14 more words not shown)
- Edoes not acknowledge(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Good health could involve both luck and personal choices. The question is what these studies tell us about their relative importance.
They show that people with more education tend to have better health. The author then explains good health largely through informed lifestyle choices. That may be a plausible story: education could help someone make those choices. But the studies as described haven't shown that this is why the two groups of facts go together.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw question, I'd look for that unsupported move from a relationship to an explanation. We need a way the education-health pattern could exist without informed choices being the main reason for good health. Keep largely in view, too. The author isn't claiming perfect health for every informed person, so finding a single exception won't necessarily expose the gap.
Working the answers
- A
The argument doesn't require informed choices to be exclusive to highly educated people. People with less formal education could make informed choices too. The claim concerns what largely explains good health, not which people are the only ones capable of making sensible decisions.
- B
Someone could make informed choices and still suffer from an inherited disease. That is compatible with choices being a major contributor to health. The conclusion doesn't promise that good decisions eliminate every other influence or prevent every illness. B raises an exception without identifying why the studies fail to establish the proposed explanation.
- C
The author doesn't need to assume everyone has access to informed lifestyle choices. A claim about what explains the health of the people studied is different from a claim that every person has the same opportunities. C attributes a universal availability claim that the reasoning doesn't require.
- DCorrect
What if wealth helps people obtain both more education and better health? For example, money might pay for schooling and also for health care. Then education and health could go together partly because of that shared advantage, rather than because education produced healthier decisions.
We don't have to establish that wealth is the real explanation. It is a possible common influence that the reported correlation hasn't ruled out. That possibility shows why observing education and health together doesn't, by itself, establish the author's account of how informed choices produce good health.
- E
Some people who make uninformed choices could still be healthy. That wouldn't refute a claim about what largely produces good health. The conclusion leaves room for exceptions and other influences. D instead challenges the explanation of the overall pattern the author uses as support.
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