16Hit1600
Information and IdeasVery hardUsing a control comparison to weaken a causal claim

Information and Ideas practice question

The Fernbrook Swim Club moved practice for its 13-and-under group from 5 p.m. to 6 a.m. at the start of the 2023 season. By the end of that season, the group's average 100-meter freestyle time had improved by 2.4 seconds. Head coach Luis Amador credits the new schedule: swimmers who have not yet sat through a school day, he argues, arrive fresh and train with far more intensity, and the season's times show the difference.

Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken Amador's claim?

  1. A. Over the same season, the 13-and-under group at a nearby club that kept its late-afternoon practice schedule also improved its average 100-meter freestyle time by about 2.4 seconds.Correct
  2. B. The 6 a.m. practices are held in the same pool and run for the same 90 minutes as the 5 p.m. practices did.
  3. C. The Fernbrook group's average 100-meter breaststroke time improved by only 0.8 seconds over the season.
  4. D. Swimmers in the Fernbrook group reported that they liked the 6 a.m. practice less than the 5 p.m. practice.

Answer: A. Over the same season, the 13-and-under group at a nearby club that kept its late-afternoon practice schedule also improved its average 100-meter freestyle time by about 2.4 seconds.

Amador infers cause from a single group's improvement. Choice A supplies the missing comparison: a similar group of 13-and-under swimmers that made no schedule change improved by the same 2.4 seconds, so an improvement of that size is what a season of training and growth produces anyway, and the schedule change is left with nothing to explain. Choice B is the error of mistaking a controlled variable for counterevidence; holding the pool and practice length constant actually isolates the schedule change and, if anything, helps Amador. Choice C is the error of treating a smaller gain in a different event as contradiction: the claim is about the freestyle result, and a modest breaststroke gain does not show that some other factor produced the freestyle gain. Choice D is the error of substituting swimmers' preferences for performance evidence; disliking an early practice is consistent with improving at it.

Why the other answers are wrong

B. The 6 a.m. practices are held in the same pool and run for the same 90 minutes as the 5 p.m. practices did.
Holding the pool and the 90-minute length constant actually isolates the schedule as the only thing that changed, which supports Amador rather than weakening him.
C. The Fernbrook group's average 100-meter breaststroke time improved by only 0.8 seconds over the season.
A smaller gain in a different stroke doesn't contradict the freestyle claim — to weaken the argument you need evidence that something other than the schedule produced that 2.4-second freestyle improvement.
D. Swimmers in the Fernbrook group reported that they liked the 6 a.m. practice less than the 5 p.m. practice.
Swimmers can dislike a practice time and still improve at it. Preference isn't performance evidence, so this leaves Amador's causal claim untouched.

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