Q13 - Medical researcher: A new screening test

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: The new screening test can prompt dangerous operations that are not medically necessary.

Premises: The screening test detects certain polyps so early that it's not clear whether they are malignant. In most cases, doctors remove the polyps anyway. The removal process is dangerous. Some of the polyps turn out not to be malignant.

Answer Anticipation:
This seems like a pretty good argument. But, what is a polyp, anyway? Anything malignant is dangerous, but what about a nonmalignant polyp? This argument assumes that removing a nonmalignant polyp isn't medically necessary. But is that really the case? The argument doesn’t establish that, so this seems like it could be the assumption.

Correct answer:
B

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Ethically justified? Out of scope!

(B) This matches our prephrase. To be sure, we can use the negation test. What if removing nonmalignant polyps is ALWAYS medically necessary? Well then our argument falls apart. We have a winner!

(C) We definitely don't need to assume an either/or recommendation.

(D) I'm skeptical of this recommendation, too. We're trying to conclude that some of these procedures AREN'T medically necessary. Deeming certain other procedures to be legitimately medically necessary doesn't help me do that.

(E) Medically useful? Out of scope!

Takeaway/Pattern:
While we often don't think of Necessary Assumption questions as great questions to prephrase, about 50% of Necessary Assumption them will present an argument with a new concept in the conclusion. When this happens, a bridge assumption can typically be prephrased. Here, the conclusion introduced the concept of "not medically necessary" allowing us to predict a bridge assumption connecting "removing nonmalignant" to "not medically necessary."

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