#13 - A six-month public health campaign sought to limit

[T.B.Justin]

Hey PS,

I have this as a causal argument which my be a stretch.

Health Campaign Lower Incidence

Answer Choice A:

Part of the health campaign (frequent hand washing) Lower incidence of some other illness


I missed this question my first pass through because of "food-borne illnesses" I thought that made this answer choice irrelevant since that has nothing to do with influenza, then I realized the way it best strengthens by showing that if this illness has a lower incidence was lower possibly due to frequent hand washing then its very likely the public is applying the advice of the public health campaign.

Also, I am just realizing how important understanding passage of time is on this test.

[tgold1]

Hoping someone can help me to understand why my thinking for B is incorrect. I can see why A strengthens but doesn't B also strengthen by eliminating alternate causes?

The argument purports to be a cause/effect case by identifying a correlation between the campaign and the incidence of influenza during those months. If the incidence of other illness also decreased during those months it could be that something else reduced the incidences of illnesses in general, ie. seasonal illness period ending. Thus, showing the cold incidence remained constant removes that possibility... Am I stretching it too far here?

[KelseyWoods]

Hi tgold1!

Yes, this is a causal argument in which the cause is the public heeding the health campaign and the effect is the lower incidence of influenza. As Rachel stated in an earlier post, answer choice (B) does not impact either the cause or the effect in this conclusion because we don't know what effect hand-washing has on the common cold. Also, the incidence of other illnesses decreasing during the same time period does not necessarily attack the conclusion that people heeded the campaign because these other illnesses could also be curbed by hand-washing, as we see in answer choice (A).

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey