The question stem reads: Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the argument? This is a weaken question.
The author describes two groups of people who have chronic trouble falling asleep. One group relies only on sleeping pills, while another relies only on behavior modification to treat their maladies. The group that relies on behavior modification falls asleep more quickly than the group that relies on sleeping pills. The author concludes from this that behavior modification is more effective than sleeping pills in helping people fall asleep.
The author has made the causal claim: the author argues that behavior modification is causing that group to fall asleep faster than the group who uses sleeping pills. In the curriculum, we covered how the tool science uses to identify causes is the Ideal Experiment. One of the requirements of the Ideal Experiment is that we randomly assign the samples into experimental and control groups. Random assignment of the groups helps isolate the hypothesized cause by controlling for other causes.
The author has provided the hypothesis that behavior modification is causing that group to fall asleep faster than the sleeping pill group. If this were an ideal experiment, we would expect to see a large sample size of people who had chronic trouble falling asleep assigned into a behavior modification group, a sleeping pill group, and a control group. However, what we find in the stimulus is not an experiment with randomly assigned groups. Instead, we find an observation that people who use behavior modification tend to fall asleep faster than those who use sleeping pills. By failing to assign groups randomly, we fail to isolate for other causes, such as self-selection. What does self-selection mean in this case? Let me ask you, “Why might it be that some people use sleeping pills (a medical intervention) and others use behavior modification (a change in habits)?” If you think that people who use sleeping pills might have a more severe case of insomnia than those who use behavior modification, you are spot on. The individuals who have a less severe case of insomnia might have simply self-selected into using behavior modification. The fact they fall asleep quicker might not be caused by their treatment. Instead, they simply have a less severe form of the disease.
Our job is to weaken the argument. So a good answer choice will illustrate the problem we just identified.
Answer Choice (A) is irrelevant to the argument. The argument is about the time it takes to fall asleep, while (A) speaks to the amount of sleep different groups get over the course of a night.
Answer Choice (B) fails to weaken the argument by comparing the behavioral modification group to a newly introduced group: one that has no trouble falling asleep. We can rule this answer choice out because the argument is solely concerned with individuals who need help falling asleep. The conclusion is a comparative claim between behavior modification and sleeping pills, so the comparison between behavior modification and people who do not have trouble falling asleep is irrelevant.
Answer Choice (C) fails to weaken because the argument is already explicitly concerned with the group that uses behavioral modification and does not use sleeping pills. Whether or not people have or have not used sleeping pills in the past is arbitrary.
Correct Answer Choice (D) is exactly what we prephrased. (D) States that the people who are most likely to use sleeping pills are those who have the most trouble falling asleep. So those who use sleeping pills could be falling asleep slower because they initially had much more trouble falling asleep than those who decided to use behavioral modification.
Answer Choice (E) is incorrect. While it does expose a self-selection bias (Those who choose the behavior modification prefer it to medication), it is unclear exactly how that would affect the time it takes to go to sleep. (D) provides a much clearer reason as to why the pill group takes longer.
Cookie Cutters
39.2.05
25.4.24
A
It is cited as evidence against the conclusion that chemical R is safe for humans.
B
It is advanced to support the contention that test results obtained from laboratory rats cannot be extrapolated to humans.
C
It illustrates the claim that rats are too short lived to be suitable as test subjects for the carcinogenic properties of substances to which humans are chronically exposed.
D
It is used as evidence to support the hypothesis that chemical R causes cancer in humans via long-term exposure.
E
It is cited as being insufficient to support the conclusion that chemical R is safe for humans.
Some children adopt problematic behaviors as a result of getting what they want.
Some child and parent relationships mutually influence each other’s behavior.
Some parents unintentionally cause their children’s problematic behavior.
A
A child can develop problematic behavior patterns as a result of getting what it wants.
B
A child and parent can mutually influence each other’s behavior.
C
Parents, by their choices, can inadvertently increase their child’s level of misbehavior.
D
A child can unintentionally influence a parent’s behavior in ways contrary to the child’s intended goals.
E
A child can get what it wants by doing what its parent doesn’t want it to do.
Really tough question. Reading only the question stem, it's not clear what type of question it is. Some general "principle" type, I suppose. So, you read the stimulus and then glance at the answers again. Notice there's an argument in the stimulus. Notice the answers are all conditionals. We're looking for a PSA answer choice. We can get away with fudging some ideas because the question stem has the word "most" in it.
So let's lay the argument out.
Sentence 1 zooms into the subset of "Most TV shows". What about them? They depend on advertising funding.
show alive --> funding
contrapositive
/funding --> /show alive (think canceled show)
Sentence 2 tells us a necessary condition of advertising funding.
funding --> many people buy product
Now we get to chain up:
show alive --> funding --> many people buy product
Sentence 3 runs the contrapositive on the whole chain.
/many people buy product --> /funding --> /show alive
[I think we really could have done without sentence 3 since it's not adding anything new. We could have chained up sentences 1 and 2 on our own and also ran the contrapositive on our own. Sentence 3 feels redundant to me.]
Now, sentence 4, the conclusion.
feel show worth preserving --> buy product
All together now:
[P] show alive --> funding --> many people buy product
__________________
[C] feel show worth preserving --> buy product
What's our most standard, cookie cutter formulation of a PSA or SA answer choice that we are trained to anticipate and look for?
IF P, THEN C
With some cleverly crafted referential phrasing, that's precisely what (B) is saying:
IF [a TV show would be canceled unless many people took certain actions], THEN [everyone who feels that the show is worth preserving out to take those actions]. IF [P], THEN [C]
Try to figure it out before reading on.
IF [P], THEN [C]
[P] is [a TV show would be canceled unless many people took certain actions]
[C] is [everyone who feels that the show is worth preserving out to take those actions]
[P] first. "unless" is group 3, negate sufficient. "not a TV show would be canceled --> many people took certain actions" =
"show alive --> many people took certain actions"
What could those actions possibly be referring to? Buy product.
"show alive --> many people buy product"
Now [C]. "everyone" is group 1, sufficient. "feel show worth preserving --> take those actions" Again, what could those actions possibly be referring to? Again, buy product.
"feel show worth preserving --> buy product"
The problem with answer choice (A) is that it's not describing the same shows that the stimulus is describing. The shows in the stimulus depended for their survival on MANY people buying a product. This conforms to our common sense expectations of TV shows. I would expect that the real life TV shows that depend on advertising funding would depend for their survival on MANY people buying whatever products they're meant to be buying.
(A) however talks about a set of TV shows whose survival depends on ONE single person buying a product. "would be canceled unless one took certain actions" What show in the world's survival is dependent on a single person taking some action? I have no idea. But whatever the TV shows (A)'s talking about, they're not the same TV shows that the stimulus talked about.