PrepTest 109, Section 3, Question 12
Some people claim that the reason herbs are(98 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(10 more words not shown)
- Aquestioning a claim(11 more words not shown)
- Battacking the validity(10 more words not shown)
- Crevealing an inconsistency(9 more words not shown)
- Didentifying all plausible(18 more words not shown)
- Etesting a theory(16 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe the obstacle is money, not whether the herbs work.
The passage opens with one explanation for why herbs aren't prescribed: doubts about their medical effectiveness. Then the author offers another explanation. Getting approval is expensive, and the inability to patent the herb or its medicinal use means the person paying for approval can't expect to recover the cost in the way a patent holder could. That gives a reason someone might decline to pursue approval even for an effective herb.
I would still pause at the final claim about recommendations. Imagine an herb available at the grocery store. Explaining why nobody markets it as an approved drug wouldn't, by itself, explain why a physician couldn't suggest it. The conclusion moves beyond the commercial obstacle the premises describe.
What we’re looking for
But this question asks what argumentative technique the author uses. We can identify that technique without endorsing every step. The author responds to an explanation about effectiveness by supplying an explanation about economic incentives. I'd look for an answer that describes offering another reason for the same observed situation.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The claim being questioned says herbs aren't prescribed because their effectiveness is doubtful. The alternative explanation points to the expense of approval and the lack of a patent-based way to recover that expense.
The author doesn't have to prove the herbs effective to propose this alternative. The point is that their absence as drugs could have an explanation other than medical ineffectiveness. A describes that move without claiming the author has eliminated every other possibility.
- B
The author doesn't inspect and reject the data supposedly supporting doubts about effectiveness. There are no studies or test results from that competing view for the author to challenge. The approval-cost information belongs to the author's alternative explanation; it isn't an attack on the validity of the opponent's evidence.
- C
The author doesn't expose two incompatible claims within the opposing reasoning. Doubts about effectiveness could be consistent with an economic obstacle to approval. The response is that another explanation is available, not that the first explanation contradicts itself.
- D
Listing and eliminating every plausible explanation would be a much more extensive argument. Here we have an initial explanation and an alternative. We aren't given a complete list, and the author doesn't rule out all the other entries one by one. Offering an explanation is not the same as establishing it by eliminating every competitor.
- E
There is no test comparing a theory's predictions with the results of a particular case. The author explains a possible economic obstacle using the stated approval and patent rules. That is different from predicting an outcome, examining a specific case and checking whether the predicted outcome occurred.
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