PrepTest 107

Incorrect. This answer has statistician information that establishes a correlation for a group. However, the conclusion doesn't recommend switching from one group to another. To be parallel with the stimulus, the answer should recommend speeders switch to non-speeders.

Incorrect. A red flag is how close the content of this is to the stimulus in discussing heart disease—that's usually a sign of a trap answer. Here, the argument features a study that shows smokers have a "greater chance" of heart disease than those who don't smoke—a comparison that's not present in the stimulus and was a part of the flaw. There, the stimulus never stated that the 75% rate of no heart disease in vegetarians was better than meat eaters.

Incorrect. Similar to (A), the recommendation here isn't to switch from drinking coffee to abstaining, so it doesn't have the same flawed reasoning.

Incorrect. Similar to (B), the studies here compare the two groups, and a part of the stimulus's flaw was its failure to compare vegetarians to meat eaters.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Flawed Parallel Reasoning

Stimulus Summary:
Careful Study - 75% of vegetarians reach 50 without a heart attack
Intermediate conclusion - Not eating meat increases your odds of no heart attack
Main point - People who don't want a heart attack should go vegetarian

Answer Anticipation:
This argument features a study, so we should start by considering a Sampling flaw, and a Correlation/Causation flaw.

Let's first look for a Sampling flaw. The argument notes that the study was "carefully conducted," so there's likely no issue with the way it was done or with the sample being too small. However, the sample was only of vegetarians, and yet the conclusion is about people who aren't vegetarians—they should switch to not eating meat. Since there were no meat-eaters in the study, we don't know if that 75% rate for avoiding heart disease is good or not. The conclusion here speaks about people not in the sample, so there is a sampling flaw.

Moving on to the Correlation/Causation flaw, there's one of those, as well! The argument shows that there's at least some correlation between being a vegetarian and avoiding heart disease by 50 (though see the note above about us not knowing if that's a good rate), and it hops from that to saying that switching to vegetarianism should cause someone to have a lower risk of heart disease. It could be, instead, that those who make the choice to become vegetarians also tend to exercise more, or drink less, or do any of a number of things to lower their heart disease risk.

As such, let's find an answer that similarly has a sample too limited in scope to speak to the conclusion while also jumping from a correlation to causation in making a recommendation to switch from one group that doesn't have the cause (the meat-eaters) to another that does (vegetarians).

Answer Explanation:
This answer has statistical information that establishes a correlation between exercising regularly and handling stress. However, it doesn't establish that those who don't exercise regularly can't handle stress at the same level—the Sampling flaw. From this, it concludes that exercise helps with stress management—the Correlation/Causation flaw. And it then concludes a recommendation, to switch from the non-exercising group to the exercising one if you want to handle stress. That has all the flawed elements in the stimulus, so this is the correct answer.

Key Takeaway:
In Flawed Parallel Reasoning questions, don't stop when you spot a single flaw. There are absolutely times where there will be multiple flawed elements, which will help you in two ways. First, it will let you distinguish between two answers that have one flaw in common with the stimulus, but only one that has multiple flaws in common. Second, it'll let you more quickly eliminate answers that don't match with at least one of the flaws you've identified.