Thinking Skills: Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

140 Unit 4 Applied critical thinking

Category

of claim

2000/1 2004/5 2007/8 Change

Clinical 10,890 8872 down

2018

Work

related

97,675 68,497 down

29,178

Motor 403,892 551,899 up

148,007

ALL

CLAIMS

735,931 732,750 down

3181

What would explain this? Why would one

category of claim have risen sharply (up by

37% in just four years) when all the others

declined? One obvious answer is that the

number of accidents had risen. If that was true

it would certainly be a plausible explanation,

and therefore a reasonable hypothesis.

The trouble is, it is not true. An official

government report in 2011 states that:

DOC B

... over the past two decades, the number
and severity of accidents has reduced.
Compared with the 1994–98 average, in 2010
there were fewer people killed or seriously
injured in road accidents (−49%)... and, the
slight casualty rate was lower (−39%).

Plainly the hypothesis is dead in the water. If

the number of accidents explained the

number of claims, the trend should have been

down as sharply as it was in other categories!

Suggest and assess one or more alternative

explanations for the anomaly shown in the

table above.

Activity

Commentary

There are various explanatory avenues

which can be explored. One is that people

really are faking or exaggerating injuries,

and in very large numbers. Another is that

although there were more accidents in the

‘scope’ of an explanation is just shorthand for

how much it can explain. Staying with ancient

history for a while longer, some serious defect

among Darius’s troops, on that fateful October

day, could explain wholly why Alexander

won, without requiring any extraordinary

brilliance from his enemy. Perhaps half the

Persian soldiers had dysentery; or there was a

mutiny. These are singular explanations

which, if true, would explain a singular event.

But if Persian weakness was the whole

explanation, it would be difficult to explain

how Alexander’s elite force won so many other

battles, across most of the then known world,

and against armies that frequently

outnumbered them. By most accounts he was

never defeated (at least until he reached India,

the limit of his empire). It is highly implausible

that each time there was some different,

unique reason for victory.

Far more plausible is that Alexander, and/or

his army, was immensely talented. We say that

this explanation has ‘scope’, because as well as

explaining the outcome at Issus, it explains

countless other victories. Nor does it require his

enemies to be defective: if Alexander was

superior that was enough. Someone who

wished to detract from his achievements might

come up with a different explanation for each

of his successes, always suggesting there was

some failure in his opponents. But the standard

historical claim, that he was an amazing

general and brilliant tactician, is a far simpler

account, as well as explaining much more.

Anomalies

Look again at Doc 4 in Chapter 4.1 (page 134)

about compensation claims for injuries. In the

second paragraph of the document we read

that out of all the different kinds of claim only

motor accident claims have risen; all other

categories fell. That is to say, motor accident

claims represent an anomaly: they ‘buck the

trend’. If a table were created to match the data

for the years in question, it would look like the

following.