The contingency-fee system, which allows lawyers and their clients to agree that the lawyer will be paid only in the event of success, does not increase the number of medical malpractice lawsuits brought against doctors. As attorneys must cover the costs for their time and research,  they want to be assured that any medical malpractice case they accept on a contingency-fee basis has substantial merit. Consequently, attorneys turn away many people who come to see them, for lack of a good case.

The argument above is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it fails to

In the United States, injuries to passengers involved in automobile accidents are typically more severe than in Europe, where laws require a different kind of safety belt. It is clear from this that the United States needs to adopt more stringent standards for safety belt design to protect automobile passengers better.

Each of the following, if true, weakens the argument above EXCEPT:

Most geologists believe oil results from chemical transformations of hydrocarbons derived from organisms buried under ancient seas. Suppose, instead, that oil actually results from bacterial action on other complex hydrocarbons that are trapped within the earth. As is well known, the volume of these hydrocarbons exceeds that of buried organisms. Therefore, our oil reserves would be greater than most geologists believe.

Which of the following, if true, gives the strongest support to the argument above about our oil reserves?

Columnist: Metro City has a lower percentage of residents with humanities degrees than any other city of comparable size in our nation. Nationwide, university graduates generally earn more than people who are not university graduates, but those with humanities degrees typically earn less than do graduates with degrees in other disciplines. So the main reason Metro City has higher income per capita than any other city of comparable size in our nation must be its low percentage of residents with humanities degrees.

Which of the following, if true, would most strengthen the columnist's argument?

Scientist: In an experiment, dogs had access to a handle they could pull to release food into a nearby enclosure that contained a familiar dog and nothing else, contained an unfamiliar dog and nothing else, or was empty. The dogs typically released more food to the familiar dog than to the unfamiliar dog. This suggests that dogs are more motivated to help other dogs they know than to help unfamiliar dogs.

The scientist's argument would be most strengthened if it were true that, in the experiment, the dogs with access to the handle tended to release more food when

Mansour: We should both plan to change some of our investments from coal companies to less polluting energy companies. And here’s why. Consumers are increasingly demanding nonpolluting energy, and energy companies are increasingly supplying it.

Therese: I'm not sure we should do what you suggest. As demand for nonpolluting energy increases relative to supply, its price will increase, and then the more polluting energy will cost relatively less. Demand for the cheaper, dirtier energy forms will then increase, as will the stock values of the companies that produce them.

Therese responds to Mansour’s proposal by doing which of the following?

Recent observations suggest that small, earthlike worlds form a very low percentage of the planets orbiting stars in the galaxy other than the sun. Of over two hundred planets that astronomers have detected around other stars, almost all are hundreds of times larger and heavier than the earth and orbit stars much smaller than the sun.

Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the above justification of the claim that earthlike worlds form a low percentage of the total number of planets?

A fossil recently discovered in Marlandia, a chain of islands, proves that a present-day reptile indigenous to Marlandia is descended from an ancient reptile species that lived on the islands millions of years ago. The finding is surprising since the ancestral species was thought to have become extinct when Marlandia was submerged in a global sea-level rise twenty-five million years ago. Based on the new discovery, many scientists have concluded that the sea-level rise in question left at least part of Marlandia unsubmerged.

Which of the following would, if true, provide the most additional support for the scientists' conclusion?

The cathedrals of the Middle Ages were community centers just as much as they were purely religious edifices; and they were structures that represented a city’s commitment to a public realm, the opposite of being a private one.

Like the one reputed to live in Loch Ness, also an inland lake connected to the ocean by a river, inhabitants of the area around Lake Champlain claim sightings of a long and narrow “sea monster.”