LR Drill Set 6, Question 3
In one study, researchers found that about 60(43 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(6 more words not shown)
- AVery few of(13 more words not shown)
- BOf bats flying(16 more words not shown)
- CNone of the(15 more words not shown)
- DFew of the(6 more words not shown)
- ENone of the(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A bat flying freely outside and a bat lying on the ground in a park are both outdoors. Are they part of the same group in this study?
The study compares bats found in homes or other abnormal locations with bats captured flying free outdoors. The first group has a much higher rabies rate: about 60 percent versus one in a thousand. We can accept those figures and still ask where the groups were found.
“Abnormal” doesn't mean “indoors.”
Maybe a sick bat ends up crawling on the ground in a public park. That could be an abnormal location for a bat while still being outdoors. If such bats fall into the high-rabies group, the low rate among freely flying bats doesn't automatically describe all bats found outdoors.
I'd also wonder whether capture selects healthier flying bats. Perhaps sick bats are harder to catch. But the clearest gap is the change from one particular outdoor group to outdoor bats generally.
What we’re looking for
The question asks us to strengthen the conclusion. A useful answer would close that location gap by showing that the high-rabies abnormal-location group wasn't found outside. Keep the conclusion modest, too: “quite unlikely” is a low probability, not a claim that outdoor bats can never have rabies.
Working the answers
- A
How often bats bite pets doesn't tell us how often the bats have rabies. A bat could be infected and never bite a pet. The argument concerns infection among outdoor bats, not the risk of an encounter involving a household animal.
- B
Read the direction carefully: infected bats are no easier to capture. That still allows them to be harder to capture, which is exactly the possibility that could leave infected bats underrepresented in the tested group. It doesn't establish equal ease of capture or rule out the selection concern. Nor does it address infected bats in abnormal outdoor locations.
- C
This separates the freely flying sample from abnormal locations, but it doesn't tell us that all abnormal locations were indoors. There could still be sick bats found outside that weren't flying free. C clarifies which tested bats belong to the low-rate group without closing the gap from that group to outdoor bats overall.
- D
Few bats being found in houses doesn't establish where the other abnormal locations were. They might have been other indoor spaces, or they might have been outdoors. Since that distinction is the source of our concern, the number found in houses alone doesn't answer it.
- ECorrect
None of the bats in the abnormal-location group were caught outdoors. That removes the immediate possibility that the high infection rate came partly from a group of sick outdoor bats omitted from the freely flying comparison. The evidence for a low outdoor rate becomes more persuasive once that known high-rate group is placed indoors. E doesn't prove that every conceivable outdoor sample would be representative; it strengthens the conclusion by addressing the specific location mismatch in the evidence.
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