Some have argued that body size

Answer choices

1. A

   Not Causal0% picked this

   concludes that one kind of event causes another kind of event without ruling out the possibility that both kinds of events are the result

   This answer describes a variation of the famous Causal flaw, in which an author overconfidently concludes one causal explanation for something, without considering other possible explanations. Could we fairly say that the author concludes that "one kind of event causes another kind of event"? Not really. The conclusion is causal ('body size influences mating decisions'), but we can't really call 'body size' an event. And we didn't find ourselves yelling at this author, "Hey, man, maybe both body size and mating decisions are being caused by some 3rd factor."

   0%
2. B

   Correct87% picked this

   bases a conclusion on a sample that may be unrepresentative of the population about which

   Why this is right

   This answer describes a variation of the famous Sampling flaw, in which an author's conclusion is a generalization / extrapolation, and the evidence is a sample that we criticize for being too small, an unrepresentative slice of the population, a self-selecting sample, or at high risk of having dishonest responses. The sample of "college students and personal ads" is likely to be unrepresentative of "mating decisions throughout all societies". Asking the co-eds at Arizona State or the users of Tinder how they make their mating decisions and expecting that their answers will be the same as if we asked a remote hunter-gather society in Ethiopia seems like a stretch. So the author should not be generalizing about all societies based on this incredibly narrow subset of data points.

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

   87%
3. C

   Bad Conclusion Match0% picked this

   concludes that an effect has only one cause in the face of evidence that the

   Could we fairly say that the author concludes that "an effect has only one cause"? No. The conclusion says 'body size influences mating decisions', which doesn't mean it's the only cause of mating decisions.

   0%
4. D

   Bad Conclusion Match1% picked this

   uses a claim that applies only to entire societies to draw a conclusion

   Does the author draw a conclusion about individual persons? No. The conclusion says 'body size influences mating decisions throughout all societies'.

   1%
5. E

   Too Strong: very small11% picked this

   draws a universal conclusion on the basis of a very small number

   It's pretty freaky that they would put another answer choice referencing the Sampling flaw. It does seem like the evidence is too small, given that the conclusion is about all the societies of the world. But can we say it's "a very small number of individual cases"? Not necessarily. We don't know how many university-age students were polled. We don't know how many personal ads were analyzed. And we're only told "their argument rests largely on" these things, so we also don't know what the rest of the evidence consisted of. If 1,000 students were questioned and 1,000 personal ads were analyzed, we would not call that a very small individual number of cases. But we could still say that it's a very unrepresentative slice of the mating-behavior pie. No matter how accurate a picture we have about the mating decisions of college students and people who place personal ads, we still won't feel comfortable assuming that their mating decisions are akin to those of all other people.

   11%