Logical reasoning PrepTest 135 · Section 1 · Question 20

Question prompt

Journalist: Newspapers generally report Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: D

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Argument or Facts

Argument

Valid or Flawed

Flawed

Question Type

Errors in Reasoning Questions

Answer Anticipation

So every scientific study that a newspaper reports on has a dramatic finding, and it’s more frequent to see a report on a small observational study. From that, the argument concludes that these two criteria overlap - that small observational studies are more likely to have dramatic findings than large randomized studies.
Whenever an argument assumes that two groups overlap, there’s always the matter of the relative size of everything being discussed. If small observational studies are more frequently reported, it might just be that there are a lot more of them than there are large randomized trials. It’s possible that there are thousands of the former every year - and while a hundred or so have dramatic conclusions and are thus reported on, that’s a small proportion of the total. On the other hand, there might be only a couple dozen large randomized trials, almost all of which have dramatic findings and are thus reported on. That’d be a higher likelihood of having dramatic findings while still generating fewer stories.
Whenever an argument is assuming that two distinct groups must overlap, always consider the relative size of each group! Any answer highlighting the possible discrepancy in the total group size will highlight the flaw in this argument.

Answer choices

  1. A
    It casts doubt on Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited
    There’s no discussion of a specific study, nor is there doubt about its reliability (the closest is stating that one type of study generates stronger scientific evidence). It also doesn’t rely on the motives of the reporters to draw any conclusion.
  2. B
    It fails to consider Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    The argument considers large randomized trials with dramatic findings but strong scientific evidence.
  3. C
    It confuses a claim Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    The argument doesn’t confuse these claims - it considers them individually and believes that they can be combined because the groups overlap.
  4. D
    It overlooks the possibility Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D matches the stem
    This answer highlights that the group sizes might be very different. Even if there are more reports on small observational studies with dramatic findings, that might be a relic of them being multiple orders of magnitude more common than the large randomized ones. In other words, it might be that the higher number of stories on the smaller studies might not be a result of their likelihood of having dramatic findings but rather a result of them being so common.
  5. E
    It fails to rule Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    The argument sets it up so that the newspapers are picking stories with dramatic-sounding findings, not the other way around, so the argument isn’t flawed because of potentially reversed causality.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 3%
  2. B 13%
  3. C 18%
  4. D Credited 50%
  5. E 16%

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