#18- A study found that patients referred by their doctors

[jessamynlockard]

Can you explain how we should've approached #18?

With my background in psychology, I found D appealing on a gut level. It seems like the correct answer choice, B, is weakening the argument, but considering the question stem is "Which one of the following most accurately describes a flaw in the argument?" I hadn't realized the goal was to weaken it.

[James Finch]

Hi Jessamyn,

The stimulus in this question is describing a study, so if you think about it in those terms the flaw becomes easier to spot: the stimulus'd description of the study doesn't give us enough information about the subject groups to draw any conclusions about their treatment outcomes. Without knowing that the control and experimental groups were similar enough in quantity and quality (such as illness, likely prognosis, age, etc) we cannot logically draw any conclusions from the study's results. It could be that it was conducted correctly, but we're not given that information, and we can't make the assumption that it was. This is a tough one to prephrase exactly, but at least we have an idea of what we're looking for.

So knowing that the flaw deals with the unknown qualities of the subjects, we can look over the answer choices:

(A): Immediate Loser, the whole point is to compare the forms of treatment.

(B): Contender, as it deals with the study's subjects conditions/prognoses and our lack of knowledge about them.

(C): Loser, same problem as (A).

(D): Loser, as the issue is the effectiveness of the treatment itself, not the doctors' personalities/what leads them to utilizing the new treatment.

(E): Loser; this could be true, but it could also be false. We don't know anything about the treatments and whether they differ in the way doctor/patient relationships are handled.

Hope this helps!

[jessamynlockard]

It does, thanks! I missed the key part that D doesn't necessarily strengthen or weaken the conclusion, because the wording is somewhat neutral. However, if there are more easy to cure patients in new therapy group, there's no reason to believe the new method therapists are any better!

[owen95]

Hi Jessamyn,

The stimulus in this question is describing a study, so if you think about it in those terms the flaw becomes easier to spot: the stimulus'd description of the study doesn't give us enough information about the subject groups to draw any conclusions about their treatment outcomes. Without knowing that the control and experimental groups were similar enough in quantity and quality (such as illness, likely prognosis, age, etc) we cannot logically draw any conclusions from the study's results. It could be that it was conducted correctly, but we're not given that information, and we can't make the assumption that it was. This is a tough one to prephrase exactly, but at least we have an idea of what we're looking for.

So knowing that the flaw deals with the unknown qualities of the subjects, we can look over the answer choices:

(A): Immediate Loser, the whole point is to compare the forms of treatment.

(B): Contender, as it deals with the study's subjects conditions/prognoses and our lack of knowledge about them.

(C): Loser, same problem as (A).

(D): Loser, as the issue is the effectiveness of the treatment itself, not the doctors' personalities/what leads them to utilizing the new treatment.

(E): Loser; this could be true, but it could also be false. We don't know anything about the treatments and whether they differ in the way doctor/patient relationships are handled.

Hope this helps!

I got this one wrong (was stuck between B and D, and ultimately went with D), but I don't think this explanation really accounts for why D is wrong at all...
The answer choice explicitly says that the personality attribute(s) in question are "relevant to effective treatment," so they do seem to be pointing directly at a confounding variable. I think the real issue with D is that the conclusion is specifically saying the THERAPISTS practicing the new form are more effective than THERAPISTS practicing the old form, rather than concluding that the new form is better than the old form.
In other words, this "personality attribute relevant to effective treatment" could be the only factor making those therapists more effective (and it could have nothing to do with the new practice at all), and the conclusion would still hold up - because the conclusion was about the therapists, not the practices.

I'm a little lost with why B is right though. I get why you'd want to have similar groups with similar diseases, but the stimulus qualifies that the subjects showed more progress "with respect to their problems," which seemed to indicate to me that they took into account the different issues the subjects may have had. "With respect to" seems to imply that they were measuring relative progress within the bounds of a respective illness, not absolute progress.
Can anyone spot where I'm going wrong with my thinking there?

Thanks so much!

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Owen,

I agree with you on your understanding of the problem with answer choice D.

With respect to answer choice B, I think you're hanging a lot on a slim reed of stimulus language ("with respect to their problems"), language that isn't sufficiently fleshed out to force us to read it the way you have. Is it theoretically possible to read the phrase in a way that factors out any differences in the types of problems the patients are being treated for? I suppose. But that's not the only reading of that language. Let's say a professor says something like, "My English 101 class has made more progress with respect to their test scores than my English 401 class." Does the professor mean that her English 101 class has made greater percentage gains (in which case a difference in type of testing doesn't matter as much)? Or does she mean that they've made greater point gains (in which case a difference in type of testing does matter)? It's not entirely clear. Given the ambiguity, attacking one of the natural readings of that language raises potential problems for any argument I'd make based on that language. Same principle here. And since none of the other answer choices attacks any plausible reading of the argument, answer choice B is the best answer.

I hope this helps!

[owen95]

Ah, ok. That makes sense. "With respect to" here would just mean that patients with anxiety became less anxious and patients with depression became less depressed, rather than the other way around. Their respective symptoms were improving, but that doesn't tell us anything about how amenable their conditions are to improvement.

Thank you - that helped a lot!

[Blondeucus]

I don't understand how D doesn't describe a flaw in the argument. Or like the previous responses said it doesn't apply to the conclusion. The conclusion states that the Therapists practicing the new form of therapy are more effective than therapists practicing traditional forms. If like D implies the therapists who practice the new form of therapy are for example across the board more calm and the patients respond to this better wouldn't that still mean the new Therapists are more effective than the traditional Therapists?? Thus describing a flaw in the argument. After all the conclusion only refers to the therapists themselves.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi Blondeucus!

Answer choice (D) seems to be strengthening the conclusion rather than pointing out a flaw. Answer choice (D) is affirming that the therapists practicing the new form of therapy are more effective than traditional ones, and it merely indicates a mechanism--they differ in some relevant personality attribute that makes their therapy more effective.

In contrast, answer choice (B) suggests there's a possibility that there's a comparison between apples and oranges going on. We're not told in the stimulus whether the patients receiving these different types of care are otherwise similar to each other. Answer choice (B) indicates that the stimulus fails to account for the possibility that the patients are in fact notably different. If the group of patients referred to the new therapy had conditions that were "more amenable to treatment" than the group referred to traditional therapy, that might be the reason that the new therapy appears more effective. The stimulus fails to account for the possibility that the new therapy appears more effective because of differences in the patient groups, rather than the therapists.