PrepTest 156, Section 2, Question 10
Medical researcher: Studies in North America have shown(52 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(15 more words not shown)
- AThe average level(12 more words not shown)
- BOther factors of(16 more words not shown)
- CHeart disease takes(22 more words not shown)
- DCertain diseases other(24 more words not shown)
- ECigarette smoking significantly(22 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The two populations consume the same amount of fat on average, yet France has half the incidence of heart disease. Why might that happen?
Perhaps something else differs: exercise, smoking, other foods, or the kinds of fat people eat. Those are possible explanations to investigate, not facts we know about either population. The North American studies report a relationship between average fat consumption and heart disease; that alone doesn't settle every cause of the difference between countries.
Also, an average can hide very different patterns. Imagine consumption is fairly even across France, while a small group in North America eats extremely large amounts and everyone else eats less. The averages could match without the distributions matching. If the extreme consumers were particularly vulnerable, that might matter. Again, we'd need evidence.
What we’re looking for
The question asks us to resolve the apparent conflict. I'd look for a relevant difference that explains either lower incidence in France or higher incidence in North America. Several kinds of answers could do that; we shouldn't insist on only one of our guesses.
Working the answers
- A
This tells us French fat consumption used to be higher than its current level, which already matches North America's. That trend doesn't explain why France currently has less heart disease. We still need a connection between the differing disease rates and something that would account for them.
- B
This rules out a similar established link with other dietary factors. It doesn't give us a reason for the difference in heart disease. Eliminating one possible explanation is not the same as supplying an explanation that resolves the puzzle.
- CCorrect
The missing difference is timing. The French only recently reached North American fat-consumption levels, and heart disease takes years to develop. Today's diet therefore needn't produce today's disease rate immediately.
We were comparing current consumption as though both populations had eaten that way for the same amount of time. C shows why that comparison can mislead us. The French population's lower past consumption can fit its lower present disease rate, even though current consumption is equal. This helps explain the gap without guaranteeing that the two rates will eventually become identical.
- D
We need to explain heart disease. A higher French incidence of other diseases doesn't tell us why heart disease occurs less often there. The fact that those other diseases are also linked to fat consumption doesn't supply the missing connection.
- E
This goes in the wrong direction. If smoking raises heart-disease risk and more French people smoke, we'd have another reason to expect higher French incidence, making the stated lower incidence more puzzling. A lower French smoking rate could have supported one of our initial guesses; E gives us the opposite.
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