PrepTest 132, Section 4, Question 5
Researchers announced recently that over the past 25(45 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(6 more words not shown)
- AMost people who(12 more words not shown)
- BSkin cancer generally(14 more words not shown)
- CThe development of(11 more words not shown)
- DPeople who know(21 more words not shown)
- EThose who use(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if people are spending much more time in the sun?
Sunscreen could reduce the risk from a given amount of exposure while extra hours outdoors drive total cases up. More sunscreen and more skin cancer can occur together even if the sunscreen helps. We'd need to account for the exposure, rather than treating those two trends as proof that the protection doesn't work.
What we’re looking for
Notice that these are cancers caused by the sun. An explanation involving an unrelated cause, such as tanning beds, wouldn't address the cases we're told about. My first thought for weakening is greater sun exposure: the protection might be working but getting overwhelmed. Let's see whether an answer supplies that possibility or another reason the overall trend is misleading.
Working the answers
- A
Price doesn't tell us whether the sunscreen works. A cheaper brand might protect people perfectly well. Without a connection between buying less expensive products and the effectiveness of the protection, this fact doesn't challenge the argument's conclusion.
- BCorrect
This raises a different problem: we're looking at the wrong period of exposure. The cancers appearing now generally result from sunburns suffered much earlier in life.
Imagine an eighty-year-old developing cancer because of burns suffered sixty years ago. Increased sunscreen use during the last twenty-five years doesn't tell us how well that person was protected as a child. The recent increase in cases could reflect old damage, even if today's sunscreen is reducing the risk from today's exposure. So the recent trends don't justify concluding that sunscreen is unlikely to help.
- C
Dermatologists' involvement in developing sunscreen doesn't establish that it works. A product could be based on research and still fail, or succeed. We need evidence that undermines this inference from rising cancer cases, not information about who supplied the research.
- D
This tells us about the preferences of people who know they are especially susceptible. It doesn't tell us how much exposure the population actually gets or explain why cases keep increasing despite greater sunscreen use. Wanting to avoid long periods in the sun isn't the comparison we need.
- E
Believing you're susceptible isn't the same as actually being more susceptible. Even if these users were at higher risk, the argument compares overall trends, not cancer rates among sunscreen users and nonusers. E doesn't tell us whether these people's risk changed, when they suffered the relevant exposure, or why total cases rose. B gives the missing timing information that directly undermines the comparison.
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