Legislator: The recently released crime statistics clearly show that the new laws requiring stiffer punishments for violators have reduced the crime rate. In the areas covered by those laws, the incidence of crime has decreased by one-fourth over the four years since the legislation was enacted. Analyst: The statistics are welcome news, but they do not provide strong evidence that the new laws caused the drop in crime. Many comparable areas that lack such legislation have reported a similar drop in the crime rate during the same period. Which one of the following most accurately describes the strategy used by the analyst to call into question the legislator's argument? ['arguing that the legislator has unreasonably concluded that one event has caused another without ruling out the possibility that both events are effects of a common cause', 'implying that the legislator has drawn a conclusion about cause and effect without considering how often the alleged effect has occurred in the absence of the alleged cause', 'objecting that the statistics on which the legislator is basing his conclusion are drawn from a time period that is too short to yield a meaningful data sample', "pointing out that the legislator has provided no evidence of the reliability of the statistics on which the legislator's conclusion is based"]