LSAT Question Explanation

PT 158, Section 2, Question 6

Most Strongly Supported

Explanation

We know that dark honey tends to have more antioxidants than light-colored honey, and the most healthful strains of honey all have a high amount of antioxidants. This first sentence alone seems to indicate that the most healthful strains of honey would tend to be dark.

We also learned about a strain that seems somewhat unusual because it is one of the most healthful strains and is light-colored. Ok, that's fine. We never said the most healthful strains always have to be dark, just that they tend to be.

The unusual strain from above is produced by bees who harvest primarily sage nectar. Also note that because this strain is one of the most healthful, using the rule in the first sentence (all of the most healthful are high in antioxidants) we know that this strain is definitely high in antioxidants.

Note: the correct answer to this question ends up coming from the conditional rule (all the healthiest strains are unusually high in antioxidants), not the correlation (dark honey tends to be healthier). The conditional rule is much stronger and allows us to make a simple inference, whereas the correlation is fairly ambiguous because the relationship doesn't necessarily always hold. This is a common pattern in Must be True and Most Strongly Supported questions. You want an answer choice that is definitely proven, so ambiguity is not your friend here.

Answer choices

(A) ✓

See above.

(B)

We have no idea if this is true. We only know that some bees that harvest primarily sage nectar produce light-colored honey.

(C)

This is certainly not supported. Based on the correlation in the first sentence the opposite of this seems more likely (although it's not proven one way or another which color of honey tends to be healthier).

(D)

We don't know. This is trying to trick you into applying the correlation in the first sentence as a hard and fast rule when in reality there could be exceptions. The light colored honey from the bees that primarily harvest sage nectar could be high in antioxidants but have some unusual property that makes them light-colored.

(E)

We really don't know anything about the strain with the absolute highest antioxidant content.