令人迷惑不解feifei第21题

21. Historian: We can learn about the medical history of individuals through chemical analysis of their hair. It is likely, for example, that Isaac Newton’s psychological problems were due to mercury poisoning; traces of mercury were found in his hair. Analysis is now being done on a lock of Beethoven’s hair. Although no convincing argument has shown that Beethoven ever had a venereal disease, some people hypothesize that venereal disease caused his deafness. Since mercury was commonly ingested in Beethoven’s time to treat venereal disease, if researchers find a trace of mercury in his hair, we can conclude that this hypothesis is correct.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the historian’s argument depends?

A.        None of the mercury introduced into the body can be eliminated.

B.        Some people in Beethoven’s time did not ingest mercury.

C.        Mercury is an effective treatment for venereal disease.

D.       Mercury poisoning can cause deafness in people with venereal disease.

E.    Beethoven suffered from psychological problems of the same severity as Newton’s.

The answer is B.若用去非否定的方法，好像不对呀？着急！！！A看来也合理，如果mercury会排出体外，头发中怎么会有呢？所以假设None of the mercury introduced into the body can be eliminated.

哈，今天我也做到这题了，我觉的这个题根本就没答案，A 肯定不对， 太绝对了，就算有mercury被排出来，还是会有留下的可能。B 就更绝了， 完全不知所云， 个人觉的应该有个选项assume that during beethoven's time, all people who had no venereal disease didn't use mercury.这样如果在Beethoven's hair里找出mercury的话，就说明他真的是有venereal disease.这样这个hypothesis就成立。

斑竹介绍一下FEIFEI逻辑吧，LSAT是个什么考试啊？ 是本科入学考试吗？ 那这也太难了点了吧。

caterpillarcn: You have  a very good point. The only problem is that at the beginning of the argument, the author didn't mentioned whether  Newton used mercury to treat venereal disease, or whether he had the disease all all. Otherwise, your assumption is perfect.

We can only use common sense to judge this question. B says that some people didn’t ingest, it more or less indicates that if not necessary, people didn’t ingest it. On the other hand, if everyone at that time ingested, then even if Beethoven ingested, we are not sure whether he used it to treat the disease, or just for fun. 

 It is not a perfect answer, but better than nothing.  Anyway, ETS won’t give such kind of  question.

The conclusion must rely on the relation between mercury and venereal.

Though mercury can be used to treat venereal,you can not to say that if mercury exits, then venereal exists.

Must eliminate other factors of using mercury.

“if researchers find a trace of mercury in his hair”这不是作者的推理的依据，感觉就像是逻辑题目会问“哪个选项，if true, 成立”一样，所以A的成立与否无关。

排除其他原因吃Mercury的确是必要的假设，但B说some不吃，但还有一部分人在吃啊，感觉数据很模糊。

想问一下为什么D不对呢？个人真么理解的：
Mercury poisoning can cause deafness in people with venereal disease。三个相关元素都其了。文中说如果有Mercury，可以推出患有venereal disease。然后怎么就能推出说是venereal disease是他deaf的原因了呢？中间没有必然的联系。

D contradicts Author's point. it's not mercury that caused deafness, it's venereal.
感觉这个题没必要太较真，逻辑不严密，PEARSON应该不会出这种题吧。

找到了大牛的讨论。http://forum.chasedream.com/dispbbs.asp?BoardID=24&ID=17525

B取非应该是用下面的方法。

全称否定(Everybody did NOT=nobody did) 和特称肯定(Somebody did)是矛盾关系。

对B取非应该是ALL did

如果所有的人都在使用m这个东西，那么m不能作为推理的依据。即取非削弱

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也有人野路子完成的此题：

即认为其是not +weaken

有人将not直接拿掉，这样就变成some did ，这样的话思路很模糊，有人在did，有人没有。但是这样的话m是一个不确定的东西，一些人用一些人不用，因此也不能作为依据，所以还是削弱。

但是不推荐这样的做法，但实在是没法子的时候，试一下拼一个答案。

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To caterpiller：

LSAT是法学院入学考试：一般对这样的XDJM，一般持敬仰的态度。。。