PrepTest 121, Section 1, Question 20
Researcher: We have found that some cases of(40 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AThe correlation between(11 more words not shown)
- BThe reduction of(13 more words not shown)
- CReduced stress does(13 more words not shown)
- DSome conditions that(14 more words not shown)
- EMedicine used to(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if the medicine works by reducing stress?
The researcher treats medicine and stress reduction as separate routes. But they might overlap. A drug could reduce a person's stress, and that reduction could treat the high blood pressure. In that situation, successful treatment with medicine wouldn't tell us that stress was absent as a cause.
We're asked to accept that stress-caused illnesses can be treated only by reducing stress. We might question that medical claim outside this argument, but even granting it here leaves our objection intact: taking medicine could be the way the patient gets the required stress reduction.
What we’re looking for
For a necessary assumption, look for something the researcher needs to rule out that possibility. To use the medicine's success as evidence of a different cause, the researcher must distinguish its effect from reducing stress. Otherwise, the same treatment result fits a stress-caused case perfectly well.
Working the answers
- A
The conclusion concerns some cases, not all high blood pressure. Other cases could be caused by stress, so the argument needn't dismiss every stress association as coincidence. Even in cases not caused by stress, an association might have some other explanation. A makes a sweeping claim the conclusion doesn't need.
- B
The stated rule requires stress reduction for treating a stress-caused illness. It doesn't guarantee that reducing stress will successfully treat any particular case of high blood pressure. More importantly, the conclusion that some cases aren't stress-caused doesn't require a claim that stress reduction works in other cases. B doesn't close the overlap between medicine and stress reduction.
- C
This concerns whether becoming less stressed changes a patient's response to medication. That's different from asking whether the medication itself reduces stress. The missing connection concerns how the successful treatment works, not a general comparison of medication responsiveness at different stress levels.
- D
Don't confuse the cause of an illness with the ways it can be treated. The given rule says stress reduction is required to treat a stress-caused illness. It doesn't say stress reduction can help only illnesses caused by stress.
Even if some medically treated cases have another cause, stress reduction might still help those cases too. The argument doesn't need any condition to be completely untreatable through stress reduction. D adds that exclusion instead of ruling out stress reduction as the mechanism of the medicine itself.
- ECorrect
This rules out the overlap we questioned. If the medication itself reduced stress, its success could be fully consistent with stress causing the illness. The researcher couldn't use that success to establish a nonstress cause. With E, the medication's success isn't explained by its reducing stress, so the stated restriction on treating stress-caused illnesses can do the work the researcher wants.
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