According to the passage, the LRCWA's report recommended that contingency-fee agreements
Zachyon April 26, 2018
Question 7: CXC Disease
This question is aiming to identify another effect that may weaken the conclusion which is "increased virulence in the past five years".
The answer you chose was the one that said farmers learned how to treat mild CXC; therefore, no longer reporting them.
A lack of reporting would bring the number down, correct?
We see in the problem it rose from 5% to 18%, so saying that farmers learn to treat their own would WEAKEN the claim to a rise in virulence because it leaves you with the question of how did the number get to 18% if farmers are treating their own cows.
Is this a correct analysis?
Replies
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@Zachy the conclusion here is, "It is clear, therefore, that during these past 5 years, CXC has increased in virulence."
The support? The death rate from the disease has increased from 5 percent to over 18 percent of ALL REPORTED CASES.
Answer choice (D) weakens the argument by lowering the number of all reported cases, i.e. farmers are no longer reporting mild cases to veterinarians or authorities.
How does this weaken? Let's use some numbers to put this in better context.
Imagine that 5 years ago, we had 100 reported cases and 5 deaths, which would give us a 5 percent death rate (i.e. 5/100 = 5%).
Now imagine that today, since farmers no longer report mild cases, we only have 11 reported cases; 2 deaths would result in a death rate of over 18% (i.e. 2/11 = 18.18%).
So (D) weakens the argument by pointing to an alternative explanation, i.e. it is not more virulent, but rather fewer cases are being reported.
Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Dreddon January 2, 2022
Im also confused here. the answer your chose to me sounds more as if there are unreported cases which would mean the numbers should be higher. However I believe the explanation for A was wrong. If many of the current reported cases were incorrectly reported then the number should be lower. I guess im confused at the logic used here as it seems that the explanation wasn't clear. Isn't A saying that the Current reported cases are incorrectly reported. Therefore, the percent of deaths reported should be lower because some are falsely diagnosed with the wrong disease?
Abigailon January 24, 2022
Hello @Dredd,
Answer choice A strengthens the conclusion, so it is an "opposite" answer. You will commonly find one "opposite" (incorrect) answer choice on Weaken and Strengthen questions (i.e., an answer choice that strengthens the conclusion on a Weaken question and an answer choice that weakens the conclusion on a Strengthen). Answer choice A says that the cases were incorrectly reported, but it also says specifically how they incorrectly reported, therefore we can deduce how this skewed the reported numbers. Answer choice A says that there were cases that were mistakenly attributed to another disease, but were actually caused by CXC. If there were cases causes by CXC that weren't reported because they were attributed to another disease, that would make the reported number of CXC cases (18 percent) lower and the actual rate of CXC deaths higher. Thereby strengthening the conclusion that CXC has become more virulent. They were falsely diagnosed with the disease that isn't CXC, while it was actually CXC that was killing them.
I hope that helps and keep an eye out for those "opposite" answers! Feel free to follow-up if you still have questions.
