medium · GRE Verbal
Researchers studying fisheries closure observed that juvenile fish counts rose after a seasonal closure. They concluded that the closure improved recruitment. The result is suggestive, but ocean temperatures also shifted into a favorable range; unless that possibility is addressed, the causal claim remains provisional. Which choice most accurately identifies the weakness in the researchers’ reasoning?
- It treats a before-and-after association as causal without ruling out a simultaneous change.
- It cites an observation relevant to the issue and therefore proves that the intervention can never work under any conditions.
- It assumes without evidence that every participant responded identically to both the intervention and the simultaneous change.
- It relies entirely on a sample that the passage explicitly describes as too small for any statistical analysis.
- It confuses the definition of the intervention with an empirical prediction while never defining the disputed term.
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