Logical reasoning PrepTest 152 · Section 1 · Question 13

Since the author states that warming water ended up not being the cause of the die-off, mentioning that the warming slowed in recent years doesn't help explain why these oysters didn't come back. Additionally, note that this answer says it slowed, not that it stopped or reversed—the water is still getting warmer.

If this is true, then whether barnacles are on the hulls of ships is immaterial to the number of oysters we'd expect to see, and thus this answer doesn't present information that's relevant to the paradox.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Valid or Flawed:
NA

Question Type:
Paradox

Stimulus Summary:
A bunch of oysters died, to the point where some almost went extinct. The cause was initially and wrongly assumed to be temperature, but later proved to be this chemical TBT. TBT was banned, but some of the oysters didn't come back.

Answer Anticipation:
If something causing an animal to die off is removed, we'd expect the animal to stop dying. Here, that didn't happen, so we need to look for an answer that explains why the oysters didn't come back.

While there are several reasons, brainstorming a few quickly before heading to the answers can sometimes help. Maybe TBT stays in the environment for a long time, even after more stops being added. Maybe the oysters learned that this area was deadly and moved on to another area (smart oysters).

Answer Explanation:
Very interesting answers that brings a lot of information together! The first suspected cause—warmer temperature—ends up relevant here, even though we might not have expected that. However, if other types of oysters that crowd out the endangered ones are now thriving, that would explain why the endangered ones didn't come back. This didn't match one of our anticipated answers (maybe it matched one of yours, in which case, great job). Stay flexible!
Key Takeaway:
The correct answer in a Paradox question will frequently not match with your anticipated answers. Stay flexible! And rely more on your generic idea of what you're looking for rather than any specific version of that. Here, we brainstormed a few specific ideas, but the key to finding the correct answer was to focus on our generic anticipation—an explanation for why the oysters didn't rebound in population after TBT was banned.

If anything, this makes the paradox worse by suggesting the warming water should have resulted in the population being less affected by TBT over the years, instead of going nearly extinct and not rebounding. However, this answer really doesn't do anything for the paradox, since we know that TBT is no longer in use.