Q17 - Which one of the following can

[yama_sekander]

okay, so i picked the correct answer (A), but i would like to know why C and D are incorrect. my reasoning was as follows.


the stimulus actually seemed to have a subsidiary argument and a main argument. the main argument was that nonaddictive drugs shouldn't be prohibited and the other argument dealt with the addictive drugs and its effects. so i focused on what the authors primary argument was and made the broad inference of answer A.


for C, i felt that it was wrong because it never stated that drugs should be PROHIBITED because they are unnatural. maybe its because of another reason

D was a little harder to eliminate, but i felt that it was trying to piece in different elements of the stimulus. it attempted to connect the authors assertion that we need to focus on the problems that lead to unnecessary deaths and injuries and then fused that with the idea that addictive drugs are harmful. but there was never a connection between these two ideas. in fact, they were evidence for different points that the author was trying to make.


so are these the right reasons to eliminate D and C? thanks

[timmydoeslsat]

okay, so i picked the correct answer (A), but i would like to know why C and D are incorrect. my reasoning was as follows.


the stimulus actually seemed to have a subsidiary argument and a main argument. the main argument was that nonaddictive drugs shouldn't be prohibited and the other argument dealt with the addictive drugs and its effects. so i focused on what the authors primary argument was and made the broad inference of answer A.


for C, i felt that it was wrong because it never stated that drugs should be PROHIBITED because they are unnatural. maybe its because of another reason

D was a little harder to eliminate, but i felt that it was trying to piece in different elements of the stimulus. it attempted to connect the authors assertion that we need to focus on the problems that lead to unnecessary deaths and injuries and then fused that with the idea that addictive drugs are harmful. but there was never a connection between these two ideas. in fact, they were evidence for different points that the author was trying to make.


so are these the right reasons to eliminate D and C? thanks

I agree with your reasoning on C. I would argue that the reason the use of addictive drugs by athletes should be prohibited is because they are physically harmful. This is the first line of the stimulus.

As for D, we do not know from the stimulus what causes some unnecessary deaths and injuries. We are told about these things, but that the author feels that we should attending to this problem rather than drugs because this is a more serious problem. Perhaps it is bad sports equipment, faulty medical screenings, etc. We do not know that it is the drugs that cause these things.

I like your point about this argument as a whole, it has layers in it.

"This is ridiculous." is a subsidiary conclusion in this argument.

"This" = Purists claiming that taking massive doses of aspirin and vitamins before competing should also be prohibited because it is unnatural."

The support for this is:

Almost everything in sports is unnatural. It names a bunch of stuff and states that those things are not prohibited.

The furthermore part, is just adding in another premise that, to me, does not factor into either conclusion.

The main conclusion is that the use of nonaddictive drugs by athletes should not be prohibited.

[jewels0602]

I was between A and D as well, and I ended up eliminating D because we don't know if addictive drugs actually caused death or injuries.

The stim explicitly states that addictive drugs are physically harmful-- I took a (hopefully?) small and permissible leap and assumed that physically harmful meant injurious.

But all in all, we just know addictive drugs CAN cause injury, but we don't know if that actually happened in modern sports (maybe it didn't b/c of the prohibition in the first place, which we can assume from the latter part of second sentence.)

Is my reasoning sound? Thanks!!