#13 - Medical researcher: Scientists compared a large group

[nschlesi]

Hi, So far I am understanding the logic behind the correct answer, however my prephrase for the question was along the lines of: injuries that stretchers incurred were not related to stretching/another factor injured the joggers. I thought this would weaken the argument because it would show that if the injuries were related to something other than stretching, the Medical researcher could not claim definitively that stretching does not prevent those other injuries. This naturally led me to chose C. I realize that I probably overthought this question, but a more general concern of mine is that my prephrase seems to be incorrect. How can I tell if my prephrase is way off track, or how can I improve my prephrase? Should I have gone more general?
Thanks.

[Vaidehi Joshi]

I think prephrasing is certainly important, but its success rate is going to depend on the type of question. For example, in a Main Point question, your prephrase should be basically spot-on/extremely close to the correct answer choice, since you are just identifying the conclusion already given and restating it/looking for perhaps a paraphrasing of the same thing in the correct answer choice.
In a strengthen question or a weaken question, such as this one, however, it's going to be harder. There is a great--perhaps infinite--number of possible things that could help/hurt your conclusion. In these types of scenarios, I do advise keeping an open mind when prephrasing. Perhaps, if you can, think of more than one thing that could weaken your conclusion. Of course, you don't want to waste too much time just prephrasing without ever getting to the answers. However, you don't want to stick too closely to your prephrase on these types of questions, or you will overlook the correct answer if it doesn't match your prephrase, as you've done here.

[sarahk]

Hi there,

For this question I answered with answer choice A because I thought that it demonstrated that the sample was not representative of the population which wouldn't warrant the generalized statement in the conclusion. Can someone point me to where I went wrong here?

Thanks!

Sarah

[George George]

@sarahk

Hmmmm.... good question. I had to think about this.

If (A) is true, and the joggers (stretching and non-stretching alike) are less likely to be injured than the general population, that discrepancy might make it look like there's a difference between the study's joggers in the general population. (It is a difference!) But the question becomes: Does that difference matter to the author's conclusion? Here, the author's conclusion is just that stretching doesn't help prevent injuries. Even if the joggers do have a lower rate of injury than the "overall rate," that could be due to a variety of circumstances. (Maybe joggers know their jogging routes better than noobs? Maybe the general population is less fit and more clumsy than joggers tend to be?) Because of how vague, this comparison is, there's no way to tell what impact answer (A) would have on the author's argument.

So, @sarahk, I don't think you went wrong in identifying a gap between the "study's joggers" and the "overall population," per se, but I do think you went wrong in giving an answer that alluded to that gap more credit than it deserves. For (A) to be right, by my lights, it would have to say something a little more specific, perhaps like "The rate of injuries for joggers who stretch before jogging is lower than the overall rate of jogging injuries." (Then we'd know that stretching was helping.) The takeaway here is that when an answer choice isn't specific enough - when it's vague - and you can argue either way for its impact, it'll be wrong on a Weaken Q.

[ieric01]

Confused why C) is wrong.

If most jogging injuries are falls and collisions, then they wouldn't be injuries that stretching could have prevented in the first place. That being the case, we know both groups had the same number of injuries but we know nothing of the injury itself. And if these injuries weren't stretch-related injuries, then how would C) not weaken the argument?

Looking forward to your reply!

[Adam Tyson]

How DOES C weaken the argument, ieric01? The author is saying that stretching does not help to prevent injuries. C says most injuries are from falls and other things that have nothing to do with stretching. Seems to me like C actually strengthens the claim that stretching does not help, because it sure doesn't help with those injuries, which are most of the injuries. We don't want stretching to have very little if any effect. We want it to have an effect!

What we need is some evidence that stretching DOES help to prevent some injuries. The idea that the people who stretch are more prone to injuries than people who do not means they should have MORE injuries than the other group. The fact that they don't have more injuries suggests that maybe stretching helped to reduce their injuries. For that group, it looks like it helped!