Absenteeism among employees has decreased steadily over the past sever

The answer is E

Explaination :-
People who have studied fallacies will solve this question in under 10 seconds.
This argument commits the fallacy of False Dichotomy also known as False Dilemma
This fallacy erroneously states that apart from the given 2 reasons, no other reason exist for the said cause and all other possibilities are absent.
So essentially "False dichotomy or False Dilemma" presents ONLY 2 reasons for every phenomenon as either because of X or because of Y



Now since you know that this argument commits the fallacy of false dichotomy you can see the correct answer yourself in 5 seconds. The correct answer will tell you 3 reasons, 4 reasons, 5 reasons or many more reasons for the phenomenon in question.


The argument in the question assumes that there are no other reason for people being LESS ABSENT other than :-
(1)Improved Health care and working condition
(2) Pay Cut


THE RIGHT ANSWER WILL ADD MORE REASONS TO IT .. WHAT OPTION SAYS SO ??

OPTION E

[color=#005826] (E) Improved health care, improved working conditions, and fear of losing money are not the only possible explanations for decreased absenteeism

There can be a dozen other reasons for people being LESS ABSENT:- Improved transportation, Flexible working hours, Lack of domestic responsibilities, having a sexy personal assistant that one wants to see every day, close vicinity between work place and home, ..blah blah etc etc

So defnitely OPTION E brings out the flaw in the argument.
[/color]

One a similar note fallacy of false dichotomy is different from fallacy of causal oversimplification:- In Causal Oversimplication th argument ignores conjoint causes and attributes the effect to a single cause. See this example
The average life spam of todays generation is 10 years more than older generation, therefore it must be that advancement in medical science has increased the average life span.
Now here again there can be 20 different reason for increase in Average Life Span but the argument just ignores all other reasons and accepts medicine as the only one reason for the effect. The true reasons can be many such as :- Better Food, Safer Transportation, Better Warning systems to save people from natural disaster, more laughter because of many comedy shoes and also better medical care.

HOPE IT'S CLEAR TO ALL




Absenteeism among employees has decreased steadily over the past several years. Two possible explanations have been offered. First, improved health insurance has allowed employees to maintain better health. Second, improved working conditions have improved morale, leading to less desire to avoid work. However, since absenteeism has also decreased at companies with poor or no health insurance and poor working conditions, one must conclude that the cause of the decrease is the increased tendency of employers to deduct missed days from employees’ paychecks.

Which of the following indicates a flaw in the reasoning above?

A) Employees who lack health insurance often have low morale.
b) Companies with poor working conditions are most likely to deduct pay for missed work days
c) Most employees are not honest about the reasons that they miss work
d) The definition of absenteeism is not clear
e) Improved health care, improved working conditions, and fear of losing money are not the only possible explanations for decreased absenteeism