An experimenter tests the reading skills of some 10-year-old children, puts them on a low-fat diet for 6 months, retests their reading skills, and finds that most show a significant improvement in their reading. The experimenter concludes that a low-fat diet improves intellectual development. One major defect in this study is the lack of any

Question

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The major defect in the study is the lack of a control group. Without a control group, it is impossible to determine if the improvement in reading skills was actually caused by the low-fat diet or if it was due to some other factor such as the passage of time or the act of being tested again.

An Experimenter Tests the Reading Skills of Some 10-Year-Old Children