Question 1

Analyze the following study according to the criteria set by your instructor:
William Elliott, a University of Chicago physician, has found a link between diagonal creases in earlobes and risk of heart disease. He investigated twenty-seven groups of people, each group containing two pairs of individuals matched for age, sex, and race: one pair with established coronary heart disease and another pair of healthy people. A single member of each pair also had creased earlobes. After eight years, a significantly greater number of people with ear creases had died of heart disease, whether or not they were known to have heart disease at the start of the study.
Elliott, who reported his findings at a meeting of the American Federation for Clinical Research, encourages other physicians to monitor patients with earlobe creases for symptoms of heart disease.
-Adapted from Science News

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Question 2

Gwen plays basketball and soccer and has won many awards for the two sports. She thinks she should learn a new sport. She expects to be good at it, given her performance in the other sports. Would her argument be stronger, weaker, or neither if the sports she excelled at were tennis and badminton, but planned to learn soccer?

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Question 3

Mark buys a pair of running shoes that is said to improve the user's speed. When he uses these shoes, he runs faster than he usually does. "It works!" he tells his friend. What causal claim (if any) is stated or implied in Mark's conclusion?

Accepted Answer

The answer of Mark buys a pair of running shoes...

Question 4

Analyze the following study according to the criteria set by your instructor:
As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 26 surgeons-in-training were studied to see whether sleep deprivation impaired their patient-care ability. For 18 to 19 days the residents kept a sleep diary and underwent five tests each morning to measure cognition, visual and auditory alertness, and hand-eye coordination. Sleep deprivation was defined as less than 4 hours of continuous sleep in the previous 24 hours, which occurred in 89 percent of the on-duty nights studied. When sleep deprivation occurred, total sleep averaged 3 hours, and the longest uninterrupted sleep averaged 2.2 hours.
Residents did show "trivial" improvement on two tests when they obtained some sleep just before testing, but the researchers said repetitive sleep deprivation did not impair the residents' test performances.
The study "does not support arbitrary recommendations to limit working hours of residents," it was said.
-Adapted from Science News

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Question 5

Mark buys a pair of running shoes that is said to improve the user's speed. When he uses these shoes, he runs faster than he usually does. "It works!" he tells his friend. What type of argument or pattern of reasoning has Mark employed?

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Question 6

Rachael has been hired by Mane, a fitness company, to see if their new fitness program is an effective method of reducing weight. She recruits 500 overweight people between the ages of 45-60 and randomly assigns them two groups. Group A consists of people who take part in Mane's fitness program for 5 hours a week, while group B consists of people who will undertake cardio and weight training, also 5 times a week. Both groups are instructed to maintain a balanced diet during the course of the experiment. After 3 months, Rachael finds that group A members have lost 10 percent of body fat, while group B members have lost 3 percent of body fat.
The research category that best fits this study is

Accepted Answer

This study is a randomized controlled experiment because participants were randomly assigned to either the intervention group (Mane's fitness program) or the control group (cardio and weight training) to compare the effects on body fat percentage.

Question 7

Gwen plays basketball and soccer and has won many awards for the two sports. She thinks she should learn a new sport. She expects to be good at it, given her performance in the other sports. If we don't know which sport she would undertake, would her argument be stronger, weaker, or neither if she had excelled in four sports, rather than two?

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Question 8

Make this inductive (statistical) syllogism into a strong argument by supplying an appropriate premise or conclusion: Rayyan must have the book "No Place for Animals." Most animal rightists do.

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Question 9

Make this inductive (statistical) syllogism into a strong argument by supplying an appropriate premise or conclusion: I'm sure Jim is attending the antiwar rally. Most Liberals are attending it.

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Question 10

Analyze the following study according to the criteria set by your instructor:
"Barbara Sherwin, director of a research team at McGill University, found that a small quantity of the male hormone testosterone, in addition to estrogen, led to a spicier sex life for some postmenopausal women. Twenty-two of the McGill team's subjects were given 150 milligrams a month of testosterone with estrogen, 11 were given estrogen alone, and 11 took placebos. The testosterone group reported more desire and arousal and more frequent sexual thoughts than did the women in the other two groups.
Though 17 percent of the testosterone recipients developed mild facial hair, this side effect receded when the dosage was reduced."
-Elsie Rosner, Physician's Weekly, reported in Reader's Digest

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Question 11

Analyze the following study according to the criteria set by your instructor:
Smoking greatly increases the likelihood of premature facial wrinkling, according to University of Utah scientists reporting in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The scientists studied 109 smokers and 23 people who had never smoked, all between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-nine. The smokers had smoked three to fifty pack-years, with a pack-year equal to smoking one pack a day per year. Each subject estimated the number of hours spent in the sun, and that information was adjusted for pigmentation, place of residence, and use of sunscreen or protective clothing. The subjects' temples were then photographed and the pictures evaluated by two doctors, who did not know whether the subject smoked or not. The reviewers agreed on the degree of wrinkling 81 percent of the time, and disagreements were averaged.
The results were adjusted for age and pigmentation. Heavy smokers were nearly five times more likely to show excessive skin wrinkling than their nonsmoking counterparts.
-Adapted from Science News and AP reports

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Question 12

Gwen plays basketball and soccer and has performed adequately in the two sports. She thinks she should learn a new sport. She expects to be adequate at it, given her performance in the other sports. Would her argument be stronger, weaker, or neither if she decided that she would undertake special training to excel at the new sport?

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The answer of Gwen plays basketball and soccer and has...

Question 13

Analyze the following study according to the criteria set by your instructor:
Dr. Dean Ornish, of the University of California San Francisco Medical School and Pacific Presbyterian
Medical Center, wanted to learn whether lifestyle changes could reverse the progress of heart disease. At first, he found little support for his research, and several of his grant requests were turned down.
Eventually he secured funding from private contributors.
Ornish recruited forty-three men and five women, ages forty-one to seventy-one, all with very serious heart disease. A statistician randomly assigned the subjects either to a group that followed their own doctor's recommendations for diet and lifestyle changes or to a group that would follow a mild exercise regimen coupled with stress-management counseling and a low-fat vegetarian diet with no meats, poultry, or fish and with restricted intake levels of cholesterol and fat.
Six people in this group did not complete the testing. Among the remaining twenty-two participants, eighteen showed reversal of the blockages in their coronary arteries after one year. In the comparison group, one person dropped out, and ten of the remaining nineteen developed measurably worse heart disease, while three showed no significant change. Six people in the comparison group showed measurable reversal. This was due, says Ornish, to the lifestyle changes they made on their own.
Dr. Alexander Leaf, former chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at Harvard University Medical School, says, "For the first time, we have a carefully done scientific study that shows, even in advanced stages, this disease can be reversed with lifestyle changes." Ornish's findings have prompted sizable grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and other foundations.
-Adapted from Reader's Digest

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Question 14

Evaluate the following analogical argument:
I'm sure Kerron will win the tennis finals. He won the racquetball tournament, didn't he?

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I'm sure Kerron...

Question 15

Is the following a physical causal explanation or behavioral causal explanation? "They are not attending the concert because they are traveling that weekend."

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Question 16

Evaluate the following analogical argument:
I know somebody good for our band. Her name is Stacy, and she hasn't performed in a band, but she sings in my church choir.

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I know somebody...

Question 17

Analyze the following study according to the criteria set by your instructor:
Women who take one to six aspirin tablets a week can lower their risk of heart attacks, according to a new study conducted at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. The study followed 87,678 female nurses for six years. According to the study leader, Dr. JoAnn Manson, there was a 30 percent reduction in the risk of a first heart attack among women who took one to six aspirin tablets per week. Altogether, about 26 percent of the nurses studied took one to six aspirin a week, she said.
-Adapted from an article by Judy Foreman, Boston Globe

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Question 18

Rachael has been hired by Mane, a fitness company, to see if their new fitness program is an effective method of reducing weight. She recruits 500 overweight people between the ages of 45-60 and randomly assigns them two groups. Group A consists of people who take part in Mane's fitness program for 5 hours a week, while group B consists of people who will undertake cardio and weight training, also 5 times a week. Both groups are instructed to maintain a balanced diet during the course of the experiment. After 3 months, Rachael finds that group A members have lost 10 percent of body fat, while group B members have lost 3 percent of body fat.
Identify the target population.

Accepted Answer

The target population refers to the entire group about whom the researcher wants to draw conclusions, which in this case is "overweight people in general," not just those who participated in the study or were in specific groups.

Question 19

Rachael has been hired by Mane, a fitness company, to see if their new fitness program is an effective method of reducing weight. She recruits 500 overweight people between the ages of 45-60 and randomly assigns them two groups. Group A consists of people who take part in Mane's fitness program for 5 hours a week, while group B consists of people who will undertake cardio and weight training, also 5 times a week. Both groups are instructed to maintain a balanced diet during the course of the experiment. After
3 months, Rachael finds that group A members have lost 10 percent of body fat, while group B members have lost 3 percent of body fat.
Identify the sample.

Accepted Answer

The sample refers to the specific group of individuals selected for participation in the study, which in this case includes all the overweight people who were recruited and participated in the study, encompassing both Group A and Group B.

Question 20

Analyze the following study according to the criteria set by your instructor:
We provided evidence that we could prevent myocardial infarction in angina patients, says Pierre Theroux of the Montreal Heart Institute. As reported in the New England Journal of Medicine (October 27, 1988), Theroux and his colleagues placed 479 hospitalized patients who had experienced chest pains into four treatment groups receiving either aspirin, heparin, a combination of the two, or a placebo.
Heparin therapy reduced the rate of fatal and nonfatal heart attacks by 89 percent as compared with the placebo. It also reduced chest pain by 63 percent. Previous studies of heparin treatment of chest pain have produced questionable results, Theroux says.
Aspirin therapy also helped: The Montreal team found that aspirin reduced the risk of heart attacks by 72 percent as compared with the placebo. But the combination aspirin/heparin treatment showed no particular benefit compared with aspirin alone or heparin alone, and patients getting the two drugs combined had a slightly higher risk of complications, such as bleeding.
The researchers recommend, for patients hospitalized with chest pain, treatment with heparin upon admission followed by aspirin therapy for long-term management.
-Adapted from Science News

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Quiz 11: Performance Evaluation Revisited: a Balanced Approach

Mark buys a pair of running shoes that is said to improve the user's speed. When he uses these shoes, he runs faster than he usually does. "It works!" he tells his friend. What causal claim (if any) is stated or implied in Mark's conclusion?

Mark buys a pair of running shoes that is said to improve the user's speed. When he uses these shoes, he runs faster than he usually does. "It works!" he tells his friend. What type of argument or pattern of reasoning has Mark employed?

Make this inductive (statistical) syllogism into a strong argument by supplying an appropriate premise or conclusion: Rayyan must have the book "No Place for Animals." Most animal rightists do.

Make this inductive (statistical) syllogism into a strong argument by supplying an appropriate premise or conclusion: I'm sure Jim is attending the antiwar rally. Most Liberals are attending it.

Evaluate the following analogical argument: I'm sure Kerron will win the tennis finals. He won the racquetball tournament, didn't he?

Is the following a physical causal explanation or behavioral causal explanation? "They are not attending the concert because they are traveling that weekend."

Evaluate the following analogical argument: I know somebody good for our band. Her name is Stacy, and she hasn't performed in a band, but she sings in my church choir.