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Difficulty: MediumWeaken

Transportation Director: Six months after our municipal transit authority installed high-definition surveillance cameras across central bus terminals, reported pickpocketing incidents decreased by 35 percent. Because the cameras were mounted in prominent, well-marked locations, it is clear that potential thieves were deterred by the visible likelihood of being recorded.

Statement: If it is true that transit authorities also doubled the deployment of uniformed foot-patrol officers across the central terminals throughout the same six months, this fact weakens the Transportation Director's argument.

Answer: Answer

Answer

True
The evaluation is true because the supplementary fact introduces an unaddressed confounding variable (doubled uniformed patrol presence) that occurred over the identical time interval, offering a strong alternative explanation for the drop in crime and thereby weakening the director's causal inference.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the conclusion and underlying causal logic of the argument.
The director concludes that visible surveillance cameras caused the 35 percent reduction in pickpocketing.
Weaken questions require identifying the specific link between the evidence and the main conclusion.
2
Evaluate how the supplementary statement impacts the author's causal claim.
The statement introduces a confounding variable: a doubled presence of uniformed officers during the exact same timeframe and location.
An alternative cause explains the observed outcome without attributing it to the author's proposed cause.
3
Determine whether providing an alternative explanation weakens the argument.
Because the alternative explanation directly reduces the likelihood that the cameras alone caused the decrease, it weakens the argument, making the statement true.
In logical reasoning, demonstrating that another concurrent factor could account for the effect weakens a causal inference.

Key Concept

Undermining a causal conclusion through an alternative explanatory cause
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Topics

Weaken

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