Self-study
Editorialist: Additional restrictions should be placed on driver's licenses of teenagers because Conclusion teenagers lack basic driving skills. ████ ██████ ███████ ██ ███ ████████ ███ ███████ ████ ██ ████ █ ███████ ██ ██████████ ████████ ████ ███ ███████████ ███ ████ ██ ███████ ██ ███████ ███████████
Alternative Hypotheses
This stimulus exhibits textbook phenomenon-hypothesis reasoning:
Phenomenon: Teens cause a disproportionate amount of traffic fatalities.
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Hypothesis: Teens lack basic driving skills.
To weaken this reasoning, we need to undermine the link between fatalities and driving skills. The most straightforward way to do so is to contemplate alternative hypotheses:
Maybe teens can drive as well as anyone, they just cause a lot of deaths because…
This is an EXCEPT question, so wrong answers will complete the claim above in a way that makes sense, while the right answer will do so in a way that doesn’t make sense.
Note that the right answer doesn’t need to strengthen.
26.
Each of the following, if █████ ███████ ███ ████████ ████ █████████ ████ █████ ███████ ██████ ███████
a
Teenagers tend to █████ █████ ███ ████ ██████ ████ ████ █████ ████████
Maybe teens can drive as well as anyone, they just cause a lot of deaths because they drive janky, unsafe cars.
This provides an alternative hypothesis for why teens cause a disproportionate amount of traffic fatalities. If their cars are more dangerous, teens might cause more deaths even if they’re good drivers.
b
Teenagers and their ██████████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ███ ████ █████ ███ ████████ ██████ ████ ███████
Maybe teens can drive as well as anyone, they just don’t take as many safety precautions.
This provides an alternative hypothesis for why teens cause a disproportionate amount of traffic fatalities. If they aren’t wearing seatbelts, they’ll die a lot more even if they get into an average number of accidents.
(B) demands we treat “basic driving skills” as a pretty narrow category. It’s a bit sketchy to say “drivers putting on their seatbelts obviously doesn’t count as a basic driving skill.” I certainly wouldn’t want to put all my “(B) is wrong because” eggs in that basket, anyway.
But (B) talks about passengers too, which gives us a lot more distance. We can say “driving skills are about how well you drive the car – making sure everyone is buckled up and using their shoulder straps all the time is too far afield from things like steering and watching the road.”
c
Teenagers drive, on ████████ ████ █████ ██ ███ ████ ████ ██ █████ ████████
Maybe teens can drive as well as anyone, they just drive a lot more than others.
This provides an alternative hypothesis for why teens cause a disproportionate amount of traffic fatalities. If they represent a disproportionate amount of miles driven, we’d expect them to represent a disproportionate amount of accidents even if they’re good drivers.
d
Teenagers cause car █████████ ████ ███ ████ ███████ ████ █████ ██████ ██ ███████
(D) fails to weaken – making it correct – because it’s not an actual alternative cause. The narrative (D) describes is linked to driving skills.
To be sure, teens causing more serious accidents than other drivers could explain the disproportionate fatalities. But the immediate follow-up question is “Why are their accidents more serious?”, and the immediate response is “maybe because they’re bad drivers.”
e
Teenagers are likely ██ █████ ████ ████ ██████████ ████ ███ ███████ ███████
Maybe teens can drive as well as anyone, they just tend to have more people in their cars at once.
This provides an alternative hypothesis for why teens cause a disproportionate amount of traffic fatalities. Increased death numbers could be caused by the higher number of bodies involved in teen accidents, even if they get into accidents with a similar frequency and severity as other drivers.