#9 - Physician: In comparing our country with two other

[reop6780]

This is strengthen question.

The correct answer is D while I chose E.

D and E both looked like strengthening the conclusion.

About the incorrect answer E, I thought it excluded a possibility that less reports of ulcer patients were made regardless of the real number of patients that is possibly bigger than that of other countries.

As strengthen questions can make the conclusion stronger to very small extent, I assumed wrong answer cannot strengthen the conclusion AT ALL.

Then, answer E should not be able to strengthen the conclusion at all, right?

What is wrong with my interpretation of answer E ?

[Robert Carroll]

reop,

The conclusion is not about prescriptions, but about actual incidence of ulcers. We have no reason to think that prescriptions and ulcers are perfectly correlated, so more information about the reliability of the premise about the different prescription numbers doesn't actually help.

Imagine answer choice (E) is true. Then the physician's country has a good system for reporting the number of prescriptions. Does this then say anything about how many ulcers there were? It still doesn't. Only answer choice (D) makes the connection between ulcers and prescriptions, so only it shores up this particularly weakness in the argument.

Robert Carroll

[reop6780]

It was very clear to understand. Thank you!

[reop6780]

The correct answer is D while I chose E.

Both D and E were contenders, and they seem to do the same thing.

They both try to strengthen the possible difference between reported prescriptions and actual occurance of ulcers.

I don't see why answer E does not strengthen the stimuli at this moment.

The number of reported ulcers is rarer in doctor's country. Answer E eliminates a possibility that people in doctor's country do not report ulcers regardless of possibly large number of sufferers.

The correct answer D seems to do the similar job, and I don't see why only D is correct.

[David Boyle]

The correct answer is D while I chose E.

Both D and E were contenders, and they seem to do the same thing.

They both try to strengthen the possible difference between reported prescriptions and actual occurance of ulcers.

I don't see why answer E does not strengthen the stimuli at this moment.

The number of reported ulcers is rarer in doctor's country. Answer E eliminates a possibility that people in doctor's country do not report ulcers regardless of possibly large number of sufferers.

The correct answer D seems to do the similar job, and I don't see why only D is correct.

Hello reop,

Answer E could go either way. If the other countries have a bad reporting system, maybe their records are really inaccurate, and maybe those places take even few prescriptions for ulcers than the doctor's country does, which hurts the doctor's argument.
However, answer D confirms that in all countries, there's the same likelihood that people will actually get a prescription.

Hope this helps. Good luck with the test tomorrow!
David

[1800-HELPME]

Hello,

I chose (D), the right answer, but had (A) as a contender. I'm not sure why (A) is wrong.

If (A) had said The THREE (instead of two) countries that were compared...had...the same rates... would it strengthen the stimulus?

Thanks.

[Daniel Stern]

If A said that all 3 countries -- the physician's and the other two -- had the same ulcer rate, it would undermine the physician's conclusion, not support it, because the physician's conclusion is that his own country has a lower rate of ulcer occurrence.

As A is actually worded, I don't think the rates of the other 2 countries being similar matters at all to the physician's argument. We're given that they have all the countries -- physician's and the 2 comparison places -- have the same risk factors for ulcers, and then we're told that the physician's country has far fewer prescriptions for ulcer medication. From this information, the physician concludes that his country has a lower rate of ulcers.

So what we need in a strengthen answer is something that links the lower rate of prescriptions to an actual lower rate of ulcers. Answer choice D achieves this; but the information in answer A about the rates being similar in the other 2 countries doesn't help the physician to draw his conclusion about ulcer occurrence from the rate of ulcer prescriptions.

I hope that is helpful, good luck in your studies!
Dan

[Naminyar]

Hello PowerScore,

Correct answer: A person in the physician’s country who is suffering from ulcers is just as likely to obtain a prescription for the ailment as is a person in one of the other two countries.

I need some clarification about the part “in one of the other two countries”

Does it implicitly mean in each of two countries?

If not what about people in the other one of the two countries? Are they also as likely to obtain prescription for ulcers as are people in psysician’s country?

[Adam Tyson]

It's the first of those interpretations, Naminyar - that phrase means either or both of the other countries. So people in all three countries are just as likely to get a prescription if they have an ulcer. If this is true, then the difference in the physician's country cannot be explained by some difference in that rate there. It is essentially the polar opposite of answer B, which is a huge weakener.