Logical reasoning PrepTest 126 · Section 1 · Question 7

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Summary:
After the government was given control over workplace safety, accident rates in high-risk industries have decreased, so government control has caused the increase in safety in these industries.

Answer Anticipation:
When dealing with Weaken questions, we should be on the lookout for correlation/causation flaws, as they're the most common. Here, the stimulus notes that two changes are correlated—the timelines match up. From that, it concludes that one of the changes (the government involvement in workplace safety) is the cause of the other (increases in safety in high-risk industries).

That's a jump from a correlation to causation, so we should look for the common answers:
(1) ID an alternative cause
(2) Find counterexamples (government involvement not increasing safety; safety increasing without government involvement)
(3) Reversed causality (since the timeline establishes that the government involvement happened first, this is very unlikely)

Answer Explanation:
This answer establishes an alternative cause. It's not the government involvement that increased safety, but rather technology that separates workers from the dangerous heavy machinery.

Key Takeaway:
Always be on the lookout for causal conclusions in Weaken (and Strengthen) questions. It's almost always an indicator of a correlation/causation flaw, which is present in around 50% of this question type. When it is present, there are common correct answer choices you can look for, increasing accuracy and speed.

Incorrect. Government involvement in workplace safety could address worker carelessness, so this answer doesn't run counter to the argument.

Incorrect. Two issues here. First, this answer is about the number of injuries, but that's congruent with a decrease in the likelihood of injury. It's possible there are just more workers in the country, so injury numbers are higher, but it's still true—as the stimulus notes—that injury rates are down. Second, this answer is about injuries in all industries, whereas the conclusion in the argument is about high-risk injuries. Even ignoring the shift between injury numbers and rates, it's possible that injury numbers in high-risk industries are down even if overall injury numbers are up.

Incorrect. The conclusion limits itself to discussing injuries in high-risk industries, so this answer is out of scope.

Incorrect. This answer doesn't speak to the cause of the improving workplace safety conditions, so it doesn't affect the argument. If anything, it strengthens the correlation between the legislation and the increase in safety, which would strengthen the argument.