Analyst: A recent survey showed

Answer choices

1. A

   No Impact: nonscientific admin positions17% picked this

   In universities there are fewer scientific administrative positions than there are

   A possible Alternate Explanation for why these research-less bio professors are under-appointed to scientific admin positions could be that there just aren't a lot of admin positions available for biology professors. This answer almost feels like it's giving us this alternate explanation, but it's not saying that the number of admin positions is so low that there just aren't enough available spots for bio professors who haven't pursued research to reach that 1/20 proportion. Instead, it's just saying there are fewer spots than nonscientific admin positions. We know nothing about how many nonscientific positions there are, so this comparison is meaningless to us.

   17%
2. B

   Correct70% picked this

   Biologists who do research fill a disproportionately low number of scientific administrative

   Why this is right

   This badly undermines the author's explanation that "failing to pursue research" is the reason for the disproportionately low proportion of those bio professors. After all, the ones who have pursued research are also disproportionately underrepresented. If failing to pursue research were really the Causal Difference-Maker, then we'd see a difference between the bio professors who have and who haven't pursued research. This doesn't point us to any other specific Alternate Explanation, but it strongly suggests there must be some other explanation for the underrepresentation (maybe the bias from the university faculty is really against biology professors, whether or not they've pursued research).

   Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   70%
3. C

   No Impact1% picked this

   Biology professors get more than one twentieth of all the science

   No Impact: science grant money Unclear Impact: Biology professors We're only analyzing whether there's a bias involved in appointing these professors to scientific admin positions. We're not really going to care whether there's disproportionality when it comes to science grant money. Too separate an issue. Also, this answer is talking about all biology professors. We know that bio professors who don't do research make up 1/20, but we know what fraction of science professors are biology professors. If bio professors who don't do research are 1/20, then when we add in all the bio professors who do do research, we know that bio professors collectively make up more than 1/20 of science professors. How much more? We have no idea, so we can't judge whether this answer is even telling us that the proportion for getting grant money is higher / lower / same.

   1%
4. D

   No Impact5% picked this

   Conducting biological research tends to take significantly more time than does

   This answer might help explain why some professors are unable or unwilling to embark on research on top of their teaching schedules. But it has nothing to do with offering an alternate explanation for why non-researching bio professors are disproportionately underrepresented in scientific admin, or with hurting the story that university bigwigs are biased against appointing non-researching professors.

   5%
5. E

   Strengthens, probably7% picked this

   Biologists who hold scientific administrative positions in the university tend to hold those positions for a shorter time

   This has no chance of having more impact than the correct answer, but if we learned that non-researching bio professors have much longer tenures on the admin board than other professors did, we might say, "Oh, author, if the university bigwigs are so biased against these non-researching bio professors, then how come those professors serve on the admin board longer than others do?" But this answer goes the other direction. It doesn't technically differentiate between non-researching bio professors and researching bio professors, so the answer has Unclear Impact, but since it's going in the wrong direction, it's not tempting.

   7%