#10 - Physician: Clinical psychologists who are not also

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[jwheeler]

I ended up getting this one right, but I spent a lot of time on it. I was stuck between C and D since they seem so similar. I mapped them like this (mentally) during the test:

C) no years of training training --> not allowed to prescribe
contrapositive: allowed to prescribe --> years of training

D) training req'd for medical degree --> prescribe medicine
contrapositive: can't prescribe --> no training req'd for medical degree

Are those interpretations correct? If so, is C correct because the physician is saying that since they don't have that training, they shouldn't be allowed to prescribe?

That makes sense to me now as I spend more time on it, but are there ways to get quicker with identifying and eliminating close, but wrong, answers on the test? Would D essentially be a Mistaken Negation of C?

[Adam Tyson]

Good analysis, jwheeler! I would say that D is a reversal of C, but a negation and a reversal are logically equivalent, so that's not really a problem. C is saying that the training is necessary, while D is saying that the training is sufficient, and making the training necessary is what strengthens this argument.

Getting faster and more efficient is usually a function of prephrasing, deciding what the answers should do or say before looking at any of the answer choices. Here, to strengthen the claim that the psychologists should not be prescribing the meds, your prephrase should be something like "if you don't have the training, you shouldn't be prescribing the meds." That matches answer C! D tells us that the doctors may prescribe, but not that the psychologists should not also do so. Having a solid prephrase going into the answer choices will make right answers more obvious and clear to you, and will make it much less likely that you will fall for trap answers like D.

Give that a try, and I think you'll be amazed at how well it works.

[Hikaru]

I picked up the right answer by excluding the wrong ones, but I just get confused with the structure of the argument.

As far as I can tell, the conclusion of the argument is "clinical psychologists who are not also doctors with medical degrees should not be allowed to prescribe psychiatric medications. " The premises are the rest of the stimulus. However, I don't see how the conclusion is supported by the premises.

Even with the correct answer C added "No one without years of training in neuroscience, physiology, and pharmacology should be allowed to prescribe psychiatric medications ", I still don't understand why we can reach the conclusion "clinical psychologists who are not also doctors with medical degrees should not be allowed to prescribe psychiatric medications" .

It seems to me that the conclusion is concerned with the kind of people who are not doctors but are trained in clinical psychology, whereas all premises together (including the answer C) are concerned with the kind of people who are not trained in clinical psychology. So how can the latter support the former? How can the statements about the latter kind of people support the statement about the former kind of people?

Could anyone enlight me? Many thanks and happy new year!

[Robert Carroll]

Hikaru,

I think maybe a restatement of some of the information in the stimulus may help. Essentially, the stimulus says that clinical psychologists who are not doctors should not be allowed to prescribe meds. The reason is that they don't receive a lot of training in neuroscience, physiology, and pharmacology. They might receive some, but it's at most "a few hundred hours." Doctors receive years of training in these areas. So the argument in the stimulus implicitly considers the amount of time you spend studying those three fields to be important, perhaps even vital, for your qualifications to prescribe meds. A low (at most a few hundred hours) amount of time studying those fields is insufficient to train someone to prescribe meds. Doctors, because they get a high (years) amount of training in those fields, have no such problems.

Answer choice (C) makes explicit this claim. If someone have anything less than years of training in these fields, they shouldn't be allowed to prescribe meds. The "clinical psychology" training in the stimulus isn't in the answer choice because that training was considered by the stimulus to be insufficient to prove that someone is qualified to prescribe meds. So the stimulus thought that, whether or not you have training in clinical psychology, if you don't also have years of training in the three fields mentioned above, you shouldn't be prescribing meds. Answer choice (C) is not about the lack of clinical psychology training, but instead about the lack of sufficient training in neuroscience, physiology, and pharmacology.

Robert Carroll

[christinecwt]

Hi All = can anyone explain why Answer Choice A is incorrect? Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

Because saying "the ones who have medical degrees should be allowed" doesn't do anything to support "the ones without medical degrees should not be allowed," christinecwt. Maybe both groups should be allowed? For answer A to have any impact it would need to say that the ones with medical degrees are the ONLY ones allowed. But it isn't that strong.

"Teachers should have higher salaries" doesn't support the claim that people who are NOT teachers should NOT have higher salaries.

"Families in my neighborhood should give out full size candy bars for Halloween" does not support the claim that families in other neighborhoods should NOT give out full size candy bars.

Etc.