题目选项分析

In many scientific disciplines, scientists generally do not do highly creative work beyond the age of forty, a tendency that has normally been taken to show that aging carries with it a loss of creative capacity. However, by the age of forty most scientists have been working in their chosen field for at least fifteen years, so an alternative explanation is that spending too long in a single field reduces the opportunity for creative thought.

Investigating which of the following would be most useful in choosing between the competing explanations described above?

【选项】Whether there is significant variation among scientific fields in the average age at which scientists working in those fields are at their most productive