PrepTest 126, Section 4, Question 25
A study of 86 patients, all of whom(61 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AOf the 4(24 more words not shown)
- BFor many diseases,(12 more words not shown)
- CThe members of(21 more words not shown)
- DSome physicians have(18 more words not shown)
- EEveryone in the(23 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
When did the patients die?
The study gives us two groups of forty-three, receiving the same standard treatment. I'd also want to know whether they were comparable in age and other relevant respects. But even before settling that concern, the conclusion has a more immediate problem: it looks only at the number alive at the ten-year mark.
Imagine forty-one patients in the group without meetings died during the first year. In the support group, the same number died gradually over the full ten years. Both groups would end with two survivors, yet many support-group patients would have lived longer. The final head count hides the time each patient survived.
What we’re looking for
To weaken the conclusion, I'd look for that missing difference in lifespan. The groups can have the same ten-year survival count while differing in how long their members lived. Accepting the reported count doesn't require accepting that the meetings offered no longevity benefit.
Working the answers
- A
This offers some evidence against the conclusion, but only about the four patients who survived past ten years. It leaves out the other eighty-two. A difference among those four is much narrower than C's comparison of the groups as a whole, which directly addresses the general claim about longer lives.
- B
Practices used for other diseases don't tell us whether support meetings help people with disease T live longer. Even widespread use wouldn't establish this effect in this particular condition. We need evidence about the outcome the argument discusses.
- CCorrect
The patients attending meetings lived two years longer on average. That directly exposes what the equal ten-year counts concealed: a difference in survival time across the groups. It doesn't by itself rule out every other explanation for the difference, but it strongly undermines the claim that the study shows no help in living longer.
- D
A claim that meetings reduce confidence in treatment doesn't show a benefit to lifespan. We would need to know what actually happened to the patients' survival, not merely what some physicians argue about their attitudes. This doesn't weaken the no-longevity-benefit conclusion.
- E
Coping better could be a real and valuable benefit. But it isn't the same as living longer. The argument denies a longevity benefit, not every possible benefit of meetings. A report about coping after one year doesn't establish a difference in lifespan.
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