PrepTest 152

If someone is working fewer hours, there's less time for them to get injured, so a decrease in injuries would be expected. This answer is similar to answers in questions on the LSAT about car safety, where less time on the road would be expected to lead to fewer accidents.

If workers are less pressured to hit a deadline, they have more ability to focus on safety. Anyone who's been behind on a deadline knows that your behavior gets riskier. And if that's not you, you'll experience it soon enough in law school!

If the workers who lost their jobs are in dangerous industries, that means a higher percentage of the remaining workers are in safer industries, and we'd expect to see injuries go down. If the coal miners all lost their jobs, and the mattress testers are still employed, we would expect fewer injuries.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Bizarro Paradox

Stimulus Summary:
Unemployment is up, so it's no shock that injuries are down. However, it is shocking that the percent of workers injured is down.

Answer Anticipation:
Without knowledge of what has happened in a workplace other than there being fewer workers, there's no reason to expect the workplace to get safer. Here, however, it did. Any answer that puts forward an explanation for why the workplaces became safer resolves this paradox, so those answers should be eliminated.

We can specifically anticipate an answer about fewer people in the workplace making it safer. Especially if you work in an open office . . .

Answer Explanation:
This answer choice makes the paradox worse! If workplaces are spending less money on workplace safety, we'd expect to see an increase in injuries, not a decrease.

Key Takeaway:
Common trap answers in Paradox questions provide information that makes the discrepancy worse, so in a Bizarro Paradox questions, those are commonly provided as correct answers.

Also, for Paradox questions, answers that resolve the paradox frequently rely on small, common-sense jumps. Here, we see this in answers (B) and (E), where the answer assumes that less pressure results in fewer accidents, and more experience leads to fewer accidents, respectively. While you can't make these jumps in other question types, those small jumps are generally acceptable in Paradox question.

While not explicitly stated in the argument, we know that experienced workers are experienced, and thus more likely to know common sources of injury and how to avoid them. If the remaining workers are experienced, we'd expect injuries to go down.