patto wrote:
The proportion of fat calories in the diets of people who read the nutrition labels on food products is significantly lower than it is in the diets of people who do not read nutrition labels. This shows that reading these labels promotes healthful dietary behavior.
The reasoning in the argument above is flawed in that the argument
(A) illicitly infers a cause from a correlation
(B) relies on a sample that is unlikely to be representative of the group as a whole
(C) confuses a condition that is necessary for a phenomenon to occur with a condition that is sufficient for that phenomenon to occur
(D) takes for granted that there are only two possible alternative explanations of a phenomenon
(E) draws a conclusion about the intentions of a group of people based solely on data about the consequences of their behavior
If you liked the question, would you give me kudos pls?
This is good meat, B,C and D can be easily eliminated. So I will talk only about why E is not the right answer.
The argument says that the diet of people who read nutrition labels has less fat content than the diet of people who do not read the nutrition labels, and from here our beloved author made a leap of faith concluding that reading labels promotes healthy dietary habits. Now let's look at option E
draws a conclusion about the intentions of a group of people based solely on data about the consequences of their behavior The consequence of behavior is indeed eating food with low-fat content, but the conclusion which the author made was not about the intentions of the people who read those labels, had the author concluded something on the lines that 'thus people who read nutrition label indicates that they want to make healthier eating choices'