Chapter 4: Problem 22
There is a widespread belief that people can predict impending earthquakes from unusual animal behavior. Skeptics claim that this belief is based on selective coincidence: people whose dogs behaved oddly just before an earthquake will be especially likely to remember that fact. At any given time, the skeptics say, some of the world's doss will be behaving oddly. Clarification of which one of the following issues would be most important to an evaluation of the skeptics' position? (A) Which is larger, the number of skeptics or the number of people who believe that animal behavior can foreshadow earthquakes? (B) Are there means other than the observation of animal behavior that nonscientists can use to predict earthquakes? (C) Are there animals about whose behavior people know too little to be able to distinguish unusual from everyday behavior? (D) Are the sorts of behavior supposedly predictive of earthquakes as pronounced in dogs as they are in other animals? (E) Is the animal behavior supposedly predictive of earthquakes specific to impending earthquakes or can it be any kind of unusual behavior?
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