#15 - Doctor: It is wrong for medical researchers to keep

[15veries]

For some reason I felt C is illegal negation of premise in the stimulus...
like,
Share→not delay→prevent suffer
not share→delay→suffer
Why is it allowed here?

[Adam Tyson]

The key to the credited response here, 15, is the word "possible".

The stimulus gives us a conditional chain, as you noted:

Share -> Delay -> Suffering

The author concludes that not sharing is wrong, and we want a principle that helps that argument along.

Answer C talks about the possibility of alleviating suffering - if you share you might be able to reduce suffering. You are absolutely correct that we cannot prove that a contrapositive is a true statement based solely on the original claim. However, we don't need to prove it's true (that sharing will reduce suffering), we only need to show that it's possible. Mistaken Negations and Mistaken Reversals, while not provable, are nonetheless possible.

Imagine this conditional claim - it you parachute out of an airplane you will land on the ground. Now, if I say that you are on the ground, I can't prove that you jumped from a plane, right? But is it possible that you did? Sure it is! If I was to say that you did not jump out of a plane - is it possible that you are not on the ground? Of course! I can't prove it, but it's possible that you are in a plane, or a helicopter, or a hang-glider, or you've been plucked up by an alien spacecraft and flown to the nearest asteroid belt for further study.

Since C says that it would be wrong to do withhold information that could be helpful, that's the answer we are looking for. It strengthens the argument by telling us that refusing to share is wrong, since sharing at least makes it possible to alleviate some suffering.

Be on the lookout for similar questions involving conditional reasoning and Could Be True questions. Remember that Mistaken Negations and Mistaken Reversals can be true, even though we can't prove them.

Good luck!

[c08asha]

Hello,
Can you please explain further why B is incorrect. I understand why C is correct, but I bit off on B, and I want to better understand why it is wrong.
Thank you,
Asha

[Adam Tyson]

Thanks for asking, Asha, and welcome to the forum!

The big problem that I see with answer B is the "if" that connects to an unknown element - "if the most important moral principle is...". Is that the most important moral principle? The stimulus never said so. How does this answer strengthen the conclusion that it is wrong not to share?

Imagine a somewhat re-worded answer choice: "if magic fairies control our destiny and they will give us horrible facial deformities unless we share medical research, then we should share that research." (Okay, that was more than "somewhat" re-worded!) Does that that help our argument any? Nope, because we don't have any info about whether the whole magic fairy thing is a real thing.

Answer B would be a lot better if it left off the "if" and instead said "the most important moral principle is...". Then we would be looking at a pretty good strengthen answer, just as we would if we left the "if" out of my bizarre alternate answer choice.

"If" in a strengthen answer is fine, so long as it ends up connecting a premise to the conclusion. That's what happens in answer C - we have a premise that says some suffering might happen, and a conclusion that says don't do X, and the answer essentially says "if the premise is true then the conclusion is true." That sort of structure is great. When the answer fails to link the stuff we know to the stuff we want to prove, then we have problems.

Hope that helped! Looking forward to seeing more of you here!

[c08asha]

Adam,
Thank you for the explanation, magic fairies and all. I went through some other strengthen-principle questions, of which this was the first I'd seen, and I got a better feel for what the introduction of unknown elements on these question types looks like. This style of wrong answer was in the mix on each of the questions I reviewed.
v/r,
Asha

[cutiepie]

Since this is a strengthen question,I always though strengthens love strong word usage. Just because the stimulus uses subtle word usage like "may," why do I have to choose an answer choice that aligns with the soft word usage? Since its a strengthen question, shouldn't I choose an answer choice that has strong words like answer choice A or B?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi cutiepie,

We need to watch for language that makes sense given the stimulus and the question type. In this case, we need a principal that says that we should share research as people may be hurt by the delay. If we were to pick something like answer choice (A) or answer choice (B) we'd be strengthening a different situation. The researchers in the stimulus don't KNOW their actions will cause harm, it's just possible that they will. Similarly, in answer choice (B), we don't know anything about the most important principle. It doesn't impact our argument because we don't have anything to tell us that the information in the stimulus connects to "the most important principle."

Hope that helps!
Rachael

[teddykim100]

Hello,

in the last sentence of the stimulus, is there a leap in logic between "development of treatments delay thus humans may suffer unecessarily"?

Redoing this question I realize that I got so tunnel vision on the "potential humans suffer this is wrong" , that I must have kind of just accepted the idea that "delay in treatment development means human suffering"

Because "thus humans may suffer unnecessarily" is a type of conclusion (intermediate), shouldn't the author establish a conditional relationship to guarantee this intermediate conclusion?

Something like "all delays in medical treatment, leads to humans suffering unnecessarily"

[Robert Carroll]

teddykim,

You're right in everything you said. Although we have to trust the premises of any argument, we don't have to trust the main conclusion, and by extension, we aren't obligated to trust the intermediate conclusion, unless it follows validly from the premises. So the author owes us a connection proving that the intermediate conclusion is true. No answer addresses this, and this is a Strengthen question, so the answer doesn't have to make the argument perfect. But in the future, if it matters (and it doesn't here), you've given us some good things to keep in mind.

Robert Carroll