#19 - Researcher: In an experiment, 500 families were given

[Brook Miscoski]

Mr. Mola,

The stimulus presents:

Self help books correlate with fewer doctor visits.
Better health correlates with fewer doctor visits.

Therefore, self help books improve health.

You are asked to identify the flaw, which is causal in nature, so you were correct to narrow it down to C and D. Knowing that this is a flaw question can help even if you have trouble stating the flaw. Looking above, we have a single effect and two causes. That is very much like answer choice (D). Answer choice (C), on the other hand, talks about having two effects instead of about having two causes. Since a correct flaw choice must describe the stimulus, (C) is wrong for the simple reason that it mixes up what we've got two of.

(C) also opens the door for the stimulus to be correct by suggesting that self help books could directly influence both health and doctor visits. That's not what we want a flaw choice to do--a flaw choice should illustrate why the argument could be wrong, not invent an explanation for why it could be right.

(D), on the other hand, explains that health and self help books could--independently of each other--correlate with doctor visits. So, a self help book could convince unhealthy people to avoid doctors without actually improving health.

[hope]

Hi All. Thanks for the explanations. Although I accept D as being the answer, I still have a problem with it. Here's why.

Someone's post used the abstract: A C and B C. But there is no A B.

However, the stimulus itself states that there is a B A where B is the self-help books and A is the improved health. Isn't that relationship established by the stimulus itself?

But AC D says NEITHER causally contributes to the other when ONE OF THEM actually does. (B A)

Am I reading something wrong? Please let me know and thanks.

[Adam Tyson]

That B A claim you are talking about, hope, is the conclusion, which we should not accept as valid. The stimulus doesn't establish that it's true that having the book leads to better help. Rather, it improperly claims that having the book has that effect, when the evidence does not support that claim. Making that claim IS the flaw!

Answer D points that out by saying that it is possible that A doesn't cause B or vice versa, even though they both cause C. Not that one of them does not cause the other, but just that neither of them must cause the other.

[aspiringdefender]

I narrowed ths ACs in this question down to D and E, and ultimately chose the wrong answer, E. My rationale for E was that it introduced a reversed causal relationship between visits to the doctor and owning a medical self-help book. The stimulus indicates that medical self-help books can causally improve family health; E suggests that there are reasons as to why a family that visit doctors less frequently (who have good health) might lead them to have a medical self-help book instead. The reasoning, therefore, is questionable because it nelects the possibility that the cause and effects are reversed. Where is my mistake?

[Dana D]

Hey aspiringdefender,

While answer choice (E)'s reversal of the cause and effect might normally weaken this type of argument, here it wouldn't make sense becasue we were told that certain families were given a medical self help book. There's really no question of timing in this case - the self help book was issued, and then the number of doctor's visits went down. So if we wanted to look for a way to weaken this argument, we wouldn't try and challenge the order of cause and effect.

On the other hand, if we were simply told that group A had a medical self help book and fewer doctor's visits and the author tried to conclude the cause was the book and the effect was less visits, answer choice (E) would be a great answer.

Hope that helps!