Assignment task: Please read the following passage and answer the questions below. Researchers at Boston University have found that younger men with bald spots on the top of their heads have an increased risk of heart attacks. They studied men under 55 with vertex baldness. as such baldness is called. and found that the larger the bald spot the higher the risk. Men with mild vertex baldness were about forty percent more likely to suffer heart attacks than men with a full head of hair. while for those with severe vertex baldness the risk rose to three hundred forty percent. The correlation did not hold for hair loss from other areas of the scalp. This is not to suggest that baldness causes heart attacks. In an article published in the Journal of the American Medical association. the authors of the study suggested that the culprit may be the male sex hormone dihydrotestosterone. Research elsewhere has identified this hormone as a principal factor responsible for male baldness. It has also been offered as possibly explaining the dramatically greater heart attack rate among younger men as compared with premenopausal women.
a. What correlation has the Boston University study found?
b. What are the correlates?
c. What explanatory story does the article begin to develop?
d. What causal-in?uence pattern does it represent?
e. Give a rival story with a different direction of causal in?uence. Identify the direction of causal in?uence.
f. List the different pieces of support that are presented in this passage.