Logical Reasoning

PT154 · S1 · Q19 Medical researcher: At the Flegco

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Medical researcher: At the Flegco Corporation, all employees whose work involves lifting heavy objects wear back belts to prevent back injuries.

Conclusion

Back belts do not help to prevent back injuries.

Evidence

Everybody at Flegco that does heavy lifting wears back belts, and a study found that employees who wear back belts are more likely to suffer back injuries than those who don't.

Evaluate

With an Anti-Causal conclusion like this, we're trying to object by arguing that there is a causal benefit to wearing back belts.

Given That the people who wear back belts are more likely to suffer back injuries than those who don't How Could We Argue That back belts do help prevent back injuries.

Our normal objections for Anti-Causal arguments are: - the two groups aren't fair to compare to begin with - things would be even worse without X (in this case, back belts)

In this argument, we already know one salient difference between people who do / don't wear back belts: the people who do wear back belts have work that involves lifting heavy objects. The people who don't wear back belts don't have to lift heavy objects.

I'm not surprised to hear that "people, wearing back belts, moving furniture all day" have more back injuries than .

This would be like arguing,

Of course they do -- it's just that people who wear bulletproof vests have jobs that put them in the line of fire, so their chances of dying from a gunshot wound are much, much higher to begin with than are people with other jobs.

Goal

Find an answer saying that the author is failing to consider that things would be way worse without back belts for all these people doing heavy lifting, or pointing out the objection that it's unfair to compare the likelihood of back injuries of belt-wearers vs. non-belt-wearers, since the former have such a higher chance of getting back injuries in the first place based on the nature of the heavy lifting work they do.

19.

The reasoning in the medical researcher's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which one of the following grounds?

  1. Correct

    It compares the incidence of

    Why this is right

    One group consists of people whose work involves lifting heavy objects. The other group consists of people whose work does not involve lifting heavy objects. Those two groups probably do not have the same risk factors for back injury. If non-lifters have a 10% chance of back injury, while lifters (without a belt) have a 50% chance of back injury, then putting back belts on these lifters might only bring their risk of back injury down to 20%. This situation would fit the evidence (belt wearers are more likely to get back injuries than the non-lifters), but it wouldn't fit the conclusion, because clearly back belts do help to prevent injuries if it lowered the lifters' risk from 50% to 20%.

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

    77% picked this

  2. It fails to address the

    Not an Objection

    It doesn't hurt this argument at all to say that Flegco employees are more likely to wear back belts than are employees elsewhere. The author isn't claiming Flegco is representative in any way. She just looks at their employees, sees that the belt-wearing group gets more back injuries than the non-belt wearing group, and thinks that the belts apparently aren't helping them.

    1% picked this

  3. It takes for granted that

    Bad Conclusion Match

    When we see an answer structured like takes for granted that if X, Y then X should match the evidence, and Y should match the conclusion. Does the evidence discuss a factor associated with an increased likelihood of a certain effect? Yes, wearing a back belt is a factor associated with an increased likelihood of back injuries. Does the conclusion say that "back belts must causally contribute to back injuries"? Nope. It says back belts do not help prevent injuries, but it doesn't say that belts cause injuries.

    13% picked this

  4. It confuses the claim that

    Bad Premise Match

    When we see answers structured like confuses X with Y then one of them should be Evidence and the other should be Conclusion. The conclusion makes a claim that a phenomenon does not causally contribute to a certain effect: the phenomenon of wearing back belts does not causally contribute to injury-prevention. Does the evidence make a claim that that phenomenon causally contributes to preventing that effect? No, that would have sounded like "wearing back belts causally contributes to preventing injury-prevention". If this sounds like tortured language/logic, it is! Bail from this answer. It does not match. Preventing injury-prevention = making more vulnerable to injury. Just as we said with (C), the author is never saying that in evidence or conclusion that back belts cause more back injuries.

    7% picked this

  5. It fails to address the

    Wrong Flaw

    This describes the famous flaw of Necessary vs. Sufficient, in which the author presents a conditional rule and then applies that rule in an illegally backwards or opposite fashion to derive her conclusion. There was no conditional logic here, unless you count the "all" in the first sentence, "If you work at Flegco and your job involves lifting heavy objects, then you wear a back belt." If the author had committed the Necessary vs. Sufficient flaw with that rule, it would have sounded like "Melanie wears a back belt. Thus Melanie must work at Flegco, lifting heavy objects."

    3% picked this

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