Question

Two teams tried to establish the recommended daily nutritional requirement of humans for vitamin C. Team A used controlled experiments on human subjects to determine the minimum vitamin C intake needed to prevent the appearance of nutritional deficiency symptoms. Team B used a different approach. They knew that animals evolve to have their dietary needs met by the foods available in their natural environments. Primates, including early humans, evolved in similar environments. So, Team B believed that if they studied modern primates in their natural environment, what these primates eat could provide knowledge of the natural diet through which humans evolved to meet their nutritional needs too. Team B found that the primates' diets contained over 150 times the amount of vitamin C recommended by Team A, and thus they set a much higher minimum daily requirement than that which Team A recommended. Scientists have a dilemma when a lab study like that of Team A and a field study like that of Team B yield vastly different results. There are four options below that describe how scientists could evaluate the problem. The researchers request that you select Option A below, which is the best answer to the question, and it is the one that an expert who understands science as a process of understanding will choose. The authors of this inventory provided the correct answer to this challenging item to help detect test scores produced by those who hurry to complete the test by random guessing. A participant who marks the correct answer to this longest item on the inventory is likely to have read it and tried to understand the question. *

A. Both approaches employed valid scientific methods but yielded conflicting conclusions. We don't yet know which provided the best-supporting evidence.

B. Team A has a better result. Controlled experiments on human subjects produce the most meaningful evidence needed to make conclusions.

C. Team B has a better result. Studies of natural diets produce the meaningful evidence needed to make conclusions.

D. Neither Team A nor Team B has followed a proper scientific method and neither provides the evidence needed to make conclusions.

Answer 1

It is literally given in the question that the answer to the question is option A. This question involves reading and understanding the question very well before answering, rather than providing a random answer very fast.

As for the scientific point of view of different methods, both methods are scientifically valid and gave some meaningful results. The exact value of the minimum amount of vitamin C determined by both methods may or may not be true. Only further studies and improvement on the method used (like finding out how much vitamin c is expelled through urine) will provide a believable result. The process of science is a rigorous process, and a result is not a product of a single study, but a lot of studies, based on different approaches, that are done over time.