PrepTest 111, Section 3, Question 25
Physician: Heart disease generally affects men at an(60 more words not shown)
The physician's argument is questionable(12 more words not shown)
- AHormones are the(16 more words not shown)
- BEstrogen and testosterone(10 more words not shown)
- CMen with high(13 more words not shown)
- DBecause hormone levels(9 more words not shown)
- EHormone levels do(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The hormone pattern and the disease pattern line up. Does that show the hormones produce the difference?
The physician tells us when heart disease tends to affect men and women, then describes differences in their hormone levels. Those facts could be relevant. But we still need a reason to connect them causally. Earlier disease in the group with more testosterone doesn't, by itself, show that testosterone promotes the disease.
Imagine two groups that differ both in hormone levels and in exposure to some harmful substance. If that other exposure explained the difference in disease, the hormone pattern could still look exactly as described. Likewise, a change in estrogen could accompany a change in risk without being the reason for it. These are possibilities that show what the evidence has yet to establish, not claims about the actual groups.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw question, my prediction is that the physician assumes the hormones affect heart disease merely because the patterns occur together. We need evidence that they make a difference, rather than another description of how their levels differ.
Working the answers
- A
Calling hormones the primary factors would make them the leading explanation. The physician doesn't need that stronger claim to conclude that testosterone tends to promote disease and estrogen tends to inhibit it. A factor could have some influence while other factors matter more. The unsupported move is to influence at all, not specifically to the largest influence.
- B
Other hormones could also affect heart disease. The conclusion names possible effects of these two without saying they are the only hormones that matter. B adds an exclusivity claim the argument doesn't require.
- C
The broad observation about earlier onset in men doesn't establish this specific risk comparison between high-testosterone men and postmenopausal women. More importantly, that comparison wouldn't identify why the physician is entitled to attribute an effect to hormones. C doesn't capture the move from an observed pattern to a causal conclusion.
- DCorrect
The physician treats the association between hormone levels and heart disease as evidence that the hormones promote or inhibit it. But another difference could help account for the disease pattern while the hormones simply accompanied it.
The point isn't that the proposed effects must be false. It's that the supplied observations don't establish those effects. D identifies exactly what the physician assumes without enough justification.
- E
People of the same age and sex could have different hormone levels while the broad group patterns remained true. The argument doesn't require everyone within a group to be identical. Its mistake concerns what the group patterns establish about influence, not an assumption of no individual variation.
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