PrepTest 118, Section 3, Question 21
Experimental psychology requires the application of statistics to(39 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(16 more words not shown)
- AMost people need(31 more words not shown)
- BSince in most(36 more words not shown)
- CThe main cause(46 more words not shown)
- DSince many disease(37 more words not shown)
- ESince most disease(31 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
You need some statistics training. That doesn't mean more training will keep making you a better researcher. Maybe one introductory course supplies everything you need for these experiments. A statistics doctorate wouldn't necessarily improve your work.
The premises give us a requirement: to do this research, you need to understand the statistical applications, and that understanding requires training. The conclusion changes the claim. Now every increase in training supposedly brings an improvement in research ability. We haven't established that. Meeting a minimum requirement and getting better with every additional amount are different things.
Think about a high school diploma as an admission requirement for a college. Spending twenty years in high school wouldn't make you twenty times as qualified. Once you meet the requirement, doing more of the same needn't help.
What we’re looking for
For the parallel flaw, look for that same leap: you need something to get an outcome, so the more of that thing you have, the better the outcome. The answer needn't repeat every link in the original chain. It needs to repeat the mistake.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Love and support play the role of statistics training; happiness plays the role of successful research. The premise says most people need love and support to avoid depression and unhappiness. The conclusion assumes that giving them more and more will keep making them happier. That's the same unsupported move from needing something to benefiting from every additional amount.
The wording about most people may initially look different from the original. But within that group, we still have a need followed by the claim that more produces better results. That qualification doesn't remove the matching flaw.
- B
This starts with repeated increases, not a minimum requirement. Annual raises give us a reason to connect more years in the job with greater income. It doesn't say some amount of work is required for income and then assume every additional amount must improve it.
- C
Here, the proposed cause builds up over time. That gives a reason to connect increasing age with increasing risk. Whether the medical account is complete isn't our task. It doesn't move from needing a baseline amount of something to assuming more is always better.
- D
This does describe a requirement, so it gets partway there. But its conclusion says that without chemistry training, you can't master medicine. It never says more chemistry training makes you progressively better at medicine. There are also gaps between understanding chemistry, receiving training, and mastering medicine; those aren't our original mistake.
- E
This treats chemistry as almost enough to master medicine. Knowing about many disease processes needn't give you everything else medicine requires. That's a different overreach: treating one useful area of knowledge as nearly sufficient, rather than assuming each additional amount of a required ingredient improves the result.
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