Evidence in Text
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Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken the scholar's claim?
Isotope data from medieval village dogs show diets dominated by human refuse.
Genomic analyses indicate that early dogs diverged from wolves roughly 25,000 years ago in multiple regions.
A single cave site preserves canid footprints crossing a midden layer next to discarded bones.
The oldest securely dated dog remains cluster at seasonal big-game kill sites far from contemporaneous settlements, and the bones show healed limb injuries consistent with repeated long-distance tracking alongside hunters.
Explanation
C places the earliest dogs at remote hunting camps with injury patterns consistent with cooperative hunting, contradicting a scavenging-near-settlements origin. A is tangential, B is the wrong timeframe, and D is the wrong scope (one ambiguous site).
Which finding, if true, would most directly support the historian's claim?
By the 1890s, decades after the initial expansion, major newspapers routinely endorsed the lodge's charitable works.
Ports with higher literacy rates tended to have stronger lodge chapters than ports with lower literacy rates.
Newspaper subscriptions in several port cities remained low during the period because paper and ink were expensive.
Ship crew rosters, hotel ledgers, and lodge minutes show the same traveling organizers signing new members in three ports within a fortnight, with each port's membership spike occurring before any local newspaper mention.
Explanation
Choice C directly links itinerant actors to rapid, pre-publication recruitment across ports, matching the migrant-network mechanism. A is tangential (costs), B is the wrong timeframe, and D presents a correlation without establishing causation.
Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken the scholar's claim?
Industries that tended to adopt shorter hours also experienced slower growth during a nationwide recession.
A small arts nonprofit that moved to a four-day week saw a decline in the number of exhibitions it mounted.
In a randomized controlled trial across 120 factories, units assigned to a four-day week—after mandated process audits to optimize scheduling—produced 9% less total output with unchanged defect rates and no increase in output per hour.
After adopting a four-day week, surveyed employees reported lower burnout and higher job satisfaction.
Explanation
This contradicts the mechanism by showing no per-hour gains and lower total output even after reorganization controls. A is tangential (morale), B is wrong scope (a single atypical nonprofit), and D is correlation without causation (recession confound).
Which finding, if true, would most directly support the scholar's claim?
A 2045 white paper predicts that automation will make four-day weeks common by 2060.
In a randomized crossover trial within a corporation, teams assigned to a four-day schedule produced 8% more output per hour and reported lower burnout than the same teams on five-day schedules, with no change in staffing or tools.
Surveys show employees on four-day schedules report higher job satisfaction.
Firms that adopt four-day weeks were experiencing rising profits for three years before the shift.
Explanation
Choice C provides within-team experimental evidence of higher output per hour and lower burnout under the four-day schedule, isolating causation. A is tangential to productivity, B suggests selection bias without causation, and D is a speculative future timeframe.
Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken the scholar's claim?
At one elite riverside household, skeletal remains indicate nonlocal ancestry dating to the period when the style appears.
Thin-section petrography from 12 workshops shows that, at the onset of the zigzag style, vessels were made with nonlocal clay matching the style's origin region, and burials of potters at those sites exhibit nonlocal strontium isotope signatures.
Sites with the new pottery style also contain more imported glass beads and show higher population densities than earlier layers.
During the same period, obsidian blades sourced from a distant quarry appear across the region, indicating long-distance exchange of stone tools.
Explanation
B indicates imported clay and nonlocal potters, pointing to migrating craft specialists rather than purely local adoption. A is adjacent (stone trade), C is wrong scope (a single household), and D is correlation without causation (luxury goods and density do not prove migration of potters).
Which finding, if true, would most directly support the scholar's claim?
Charred spikelets showing non-shattering traits are recovered at multiple interior sites and radiocarbon-dated to centuries before the first material evidence of sustained trade with coastal centers.
Pottery motifs typical of coastal styles become common in Basin towns during the same century that domesticated stone millet appears in the record.
Only one hilltop village yields a cache of unusually large seeds, with no similar finds elsewhere in the Basin.
Seventeenth-century colonial accounts describe caravans bringing grain from the coast to the Basin.
Explanation
C places domestication traits across multiple interior sites before trade evidence, directly supporting independent domestication. A is too narrow, B is much later, and D shows coincident trends without establishing importation as the cause.
Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken the scholar's claim?
High-resolution traffic sensor data from 2021–2023 show that, despite a rise in flexible schedules, peak-hour vehicle counts on major arterials remained at pre-2020 levels while only midday volumes increased.
A 2010 federal study found that telecommuters then made fewer total trips than office workers.
At one tech firm that switched to four 10-hour days, employees chose to start at 7 a.m. to align with clients.
Cities with the highest rates of remote work also reported the steepest declines in downtown retail foot traffic.
Explanation
D shows unchanged peaks with growth only in midday traffic, contradicting the claim that flexibility smooths peak congestion. A addresses retail foot traffic, B predates the recent shift, and C describes a single firm's schedule, none of which directly tests peak-hour roadway congestion.
Which finding, if true, would most directly weaken the scholar's claim?
Pollen cores from a lake 200 km away show a severe drought in the 7th century.
High-resolution tree-ring and lake-sediment data from Hekara's watershed indicate normal to above-average precipitation between 880 and 920 CE.
A single temple district in Hekara exhibits burn layers dating to approximately 900 CE.
Written records from a neighboring kingdom describe caravans avoiding Hekara's markets due to higher tariffs in the early 9th century.
Explanation
C directly contradicts the drought premise at the relevant place and time, undermining the claim. A is adjacent trade evidence, B is the wrong timeframe, and D is limited in scope and does not establish citywide causation.
Which finding, if true, would most directly support the scholar's claim?
A detailed profile of one delivery driver shows that his out-of-pocket costs rose by 15% during peak hours.
In the year after pricing began, average commute times fell by 8%, but during that period gasoline prices dropped sharply and remote work increased.
After pricing and targeted bus upgrades, average bus speeds on tolled corridors increased 22%, and the share of low-income commuters with at least 200,000 jobs reachable within a 45-minute trip rose slightly.
A midsize city that has not yet enacted congestion pricing predicts, via simulation, a reduction in peak delays if tolls are introduced.
Explanation
C directly shows faster buses and maintained or improved job access for low-income commuters, aligning with the claim. A is a projection (wrong timeframe), B is confounded correlation, and D is the wrong scope.
Which finding, if true, would most directly support the anthropologist's claim?
Villages that adopted the grain earlier are located closer to trade routes and also contain more status-marked objects.
At the earliest farming sites, burials of individuals from households that cultivated the grain contain abundant prestige goods and feasting vessels, while isotope analysis indicates those households consumed fewer calories than nearby foragers; experimental plots confirm lower yields for the grain in local soils.
Ornamental shell jewelry becomes common in graves roughly 400 years after the earliest evidence of the grain's cultivation.
A single household deposit near an early field includes decorative pottery fragments and charred grain remains.
Explanation
B links early adopters to high status alongside lower caloric intake and low yields, directly supporting prestige-driven adoption. A is the wrong timeframe, C is wrong scope (one household), and D is correlation without causation.