Q12 - Advice columnist: Several scientific studies

[aileenann]

Essentially we are looking for an assumption to add to the columnist’s argument to sure it up. We should look for one within the proper scope and that supports the conclusion. In particular we should wonder about the columnist’s assumption that there are not benefits _ or sufficient benefits _ to stressed out people to justify the risk of competitive sports activities, or at least other kinds of sports activities that are not competitive (notice that the columnist rules out all sports activities in the conclusion as opposed to the premise).

Let’s see what our options are:

(A) This has intimidating abstract wording, but let’s at least think about the basics. It is about stressed out people, so there is the correct scope. It’s also about an activity (sports) and a subset thereof (competitive sports). Let’s keep it for now.
(B) This is completely out of scope.
(C) The author doesn’t make any statements about whether non-stressed people should or should not do sports.
(D) This is the opposite of what the author says, so it can’t possibly be a principle the author relies on.
(E) Again, this is out of scope (like B). We don’t care about people with sports injuries for the purposes of this question.

Most of these answer choices are easy to eliminate through process of elimination. That said, many students tend to miss (A) on this on their initial pass through this question. Why do you think that would be?


#officialexplanation

[cdjmarmon]

I got this answer right but I am still confused on why C is wrong. It was my initial answer then I chnaged it to Answer A, thankfully. However, C is still in my head becuase I I see it as saying:

People who have not exp stress --> Should go play competeive sports

And the using the contrapositive I link it into the rest of the argument.

~Should go play competitive sports --> someone who has experienced major stress --> Increase chance of getting injured --> risking injury is unwise --> so no activity should be used to cope with stress

Any help is appreciated

[jamiejames]

I got this answer right but I am still confused on why C is wrong. It was my initial answer then I chnaged it to Answer A, thankfully. However, C is still in my head becuase I I see it as saying:

People who have not exp stress --> Should go play competeive sports

And the using the contrapositive I link it into the rest of the argument.

~Should go play competitive sports --> someone who has experienced major stress --> Increase chance of getting injured --> risking injury is unwise --> so no activity should be used to cope with stress

Any help is appreciated

I contra'd C and chose it, I had A as my other option but it didn't make 100% sense to me.

[logicfiend]

This question is in the strengthen family. In order to strengthen the argument, you need to find the gap or the flaw that might weaken the reasoning and therefore, the conclusion.

The gap in this argument is that the premises say if you have stress, avoid competitive sports because you are more likely to suffer a serious injury.

But the conclusion says if you want to avoid an injury, don't play any sports at all. We have an issue in scope here, which is somewhat similar to Q20 in the section (jump from decrease risk in heart disease to be healthier overall).

Armed with this gap in scope, we can see A is clearly the only answer that fills in that gap. A is saying if you can't play a subset of an activity (competitive sports) you should avoid all types of that activity (all sports).

C does not fill in this gap. Try it out. Can we completely justify the reasoning with C as we can with A?

[AlisaS425]

I chose (C) under timed condition, but now I see why (C) is wrong.

First of all, the author is concerned about people "under major stress". The author suggests that these people should avoid all kinds of sports, but her evidence only deals with competitive sports, so our task is to fill this gap. (C) doesn't talk about "people under major stress", so it's unlikely to fill the gap here.

Also, the author seems to imply that "people who have been experiencing major stress should not participate in competitive sports". If such implication were true, then there's a big problem with (C) - it has a Negation problem. (suppose "A --> B" is true, "~A --> ~B" is not inferable from "A --> B")

Either way, (C) couldn't help justify the author's conclusion. Eliminate.