Researcher: In an experiment, 500 families were given a medical self-help book, and 500 similar families were not. Ov...

Emil-Kunkin on February 6 at 08:57PM

C is saying that a single thing could cause two different effects. This could mean that raising the price of books leads to fewer people buying books, but also people listening to more podcasts. Or in the context of this argument, this could mean that giving the medical book led to families both going to the doctor less spending more time going on walks.

D is saying that one outcome could have more that one unrelated cause. Perhaps we see the price of books rise- maybe the price rose because publishers realized people wanted to buy more books and they could make more money, and simultaneously a new tariff of paper raises the cost to consumers. The two events are not related to each other, but they both could explain part or all of the rise in costs. In the context of this argument, this might mean that fewer doctors visits could be chased by better health, or by a misperception that one is healthy when one is actually not. Those two things do not chase each other but they could both be effects of being given a medical book, and could both lead to fewer doctor visits.

@MichaelaJ on February 7 at 06:04PM

Is this a cause-and-effect flaw? Specifically, effect w/o cause?

Emil-Kunkin on February 8 at 03:08AM

I think so- the author is seeing one form of causation between two events when in reality another thing could have caused the observed effect.