PrepTest 150, Section 2, Question 17
Advocate: A study of people who had recently(33 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the advocate's(6 more words not shown)
- Atreats something as(10 more words not shown)
- Btreats some people(20 more words not shown)
- Ctakes something to(13 more words not shown)
- Drests on a(17 more words not shown)
- Econfuses what is(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe they took the medicine because their colds were worse.
With a mild cold, someone might decide to power through without buying anything. With severe symptoms, that same person might head to the pharmacy or ask someone to pick up medicine. Then the medicine-taking group would start out sicker. Their reports of worse symptoms wouldn't establish that the medicine made them worse.
What we’re looking for
The advocate reads the association in one direction: taking medicine causes a worse cold. Our alternative runs the other way: a worse cold makes someone more likely to take medicine. For the flaw question, look for that reversal. We don't have to prove the medicine effective to show that this comparison fails to prove it counterproductive.
Working the answers
- A
The study reports people's symptoms and whether they took medicine. It isn't an opinion poll asking most people whether medicine is counterproductive, and the advocate doesn't conclude that a popular belief must be true. The problem is the causal interpretation of the reported pattern.
- B
The participants are reporting their own symptoms and medicine use. They aren't being presented as experts whose medical conclusions we should accept. It is the advocate who draws the questionable conclusion from those reports. No appeal to unreliable expertise explains the gap.
- C
There is no move from what happens in most cases to what must happen in one particular case. The advocate draws a general conclusion about medicine from a comparison of two groups. Our objection is that the difference between those groups could help explain who chose to take medicine.
- D
The argument doesn't identify medicine as a requirement for an outcome and then mistake it for a guarantee of that outcome. Instead, it observes that medicine use and severe symptoms occur together and assigns the causal direction without ruling out the reverse explanation.
- ECorrect
Severe symptoms could be the cause of taking medicine, rather than the effect of taking it. The advocate treats the worse symptoms as evidence of what medicine does, overlooking that those symptoms could be what prompted people to seek medicine in the first place. That is exactly the alternative our pharmacy example exposes.
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