|
|
GMAT Club Daily Prep
Thank you for using the timer - this advanced tool can estimate your performance and suggest more practice questions. We have subscribed you to Daily Prep Questions via email.
Customized
for You
Track
Your Progress
Practice
Pays
Not interested in getting valuable practice questions and articles delivered to your email? No problem, unsubscribe here.
20 Oct 2019, 11:41 The following appeared in the editorial section of a local newspaper:
“The tragic crash of a medical helicopter last week points up a situation that needs to be addressed. The medical- helicopter industry supposedly has more stringent guidelines for training pilots and maintaining equipment than do most other airline industries, but these guidelines do not appear to be working: statistics reveal that the rate of medical-helicopter accidents is much higher than the rate of accidents for nonmedical helicopters or commercial airliners.”
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.
The editorial section of a newspaper presents an argument that calls for the review of safety guidelines for the medical helicopter industry because of a single accident. This argument is flawed because it relies on a single accident as a justification for its stance, it seeks to compare safety guidelines across different industries, and it uses vague statistics.
First, the author highlights a recent medical helicopter crash to illustrate the supposed inadequacy of existing industry safety guidelines and to justify some sort of reappraisal of the guidelines or more broadly the industry. It seems faulty to rely on a single incident to make a comment about an entire industry. We are given no details about the nature of the helicopter crash beyond the author’s assessment that it was ‘tragic’. In reality, the crash could have any number of causes such as lightning strike, pilot error, engine malfunction, to name a few. Without details about the nature of the crash it seems foolhardy to assume that safety guidelines are related to the cause.
Second, the author invokes the concept that the medical helicopter industry has more ‘stringent’ safety guidelines than ‘other airline industries’ without being specific about what is meant by these ‘other’ industries. It arguable that drawing a comparison between two or more different industries in this case is inappropriate. For example, helicopters engaged in medical services, such as patient transport or rescue operations, may face a different set of risks and operating parameters than helicopters involved in ‘other’ industries. We could speculate that the author believes other industries includes commercial aviation. If so, the argument is weakened since medical helicopters may be exposed to greater risks than other helicopters. Medical helicopters may, for instance, operate in mountains, over the sea, during storms or close to fires. On this basis it is possible that the medical helicopter industry already operates to better or more stringent safety guidelines than any other helicopter industry.
Third, the author seeks to rely on questionable statistics. Medical helicopters are said to experience a ‘higher’ rate of accidents than other helicopters. The reference to ‘higher’ is unqualified and could suggest the accident rate is significantly higher or only slightly higher. More detail is required. Moreover, it may be unfair to compare accidents across industries since some types of helicopters may fly more often in riskier circumstances and therefore be more likely to be involved in accidents more regularly. Definitions of what constitutes an accident could also vary across industries: where patient safety is involved the threshold for what is considered an accident, and hence reportable, could be lower in the medical helicopter industry.
In summary, the argument is flawed for the reasons set out. The argument could be strengthened by the inclusion of more specific statistics around accidents. For example, it may be more illuminating to compare accident data across different companies or organisations involved in the medical helicopter industry in order to understand whether the accident rate is an industry wide or company specific phenomenon.
Moderators:
188 posts
