| Critical Reasoning Butler: September 2025 |
| September 8 | CR 1 | CR 2 |
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CR 1 Herbed Wellness, a manufacturer of herbal products, wants its new headache remedy to be as effective as possible while using only natural ingredients. A controlled study has found that 58 percent of headache sufferers obtain complete headache relief from a dose of caffeine equivalent to that typically found in a cup of coffee. Therefore, even though the vast majority of its customers are health-conscious avoiders of coffee, Herbed Wellness should add caffeine to its new herbal headache treatment; doing so will prove both efficacious and cost-effective.
The answer to which of the following questions would be most useful in evaluating the claim that caffeine will be efficacious in relieving headaches among Herbed Wellness customers?
A. Is the headache relief provided by caffeine as long-lasting as that provided by over-the-counter drugs such as aspirin?
B. What percentage of the study participants were regular coffee drinkers who suffer from caffeine-withdrawal headaches?
C. Is caffeine less expensive per dose than the individual herbs used in the headache formulation?
D. Does synthetic caffeine qualify as a natural substance?
E. What percentage of Herbed Wellness customers will shun the new headache remedy if it contains caffeine?
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CR 2 In order to reduce classroom overcrowding while maintaining academic standards, Omega High School last year tested an online physics course with twenty volunteers from the senior class. Although they met with the teacher once a week for lab work, the students attended all lectures and did all their homework via remote computer. All of the students in the online physics course easily passed the statewide physics exam at the end of the school year. Administrators at the high school concluded from this test that all students can learn effectively outside the classroom and decided that Omega High School should offer all of its science courses online.
Which of the following, if true, would cast the most doubt on the conclusion drawn above?
A. The science classrooms currently in use are bigger than the classrooms used for other subjects.
B. The students who took the online physics course had access to the same science library reference materials as the physics students who did not take the class online.
C. Omega High School has received a grant to purchase new computers for the next school year.
D. The students who enrolled in the online physics course were more self-motivated than most students and were high achievers in the top ten percentile of their class.
E. There are excellent computer programs for teaching high school earth science, biology and chemistry.