Q22 - The United States Food

[tzyc]

Is (C) wrong because FDA has partial responsibilities as well (facilitate the transfer) and (C) excludes it?

Thank you.

[a3friedm]

It's wrong because "excessively". The stimulus tells us the academic and government research committees are responsible for the long process of initial discovery, but for all we know the long process is a necessary for the drugs safety.

hope that helps

[tara_amber1]

I got this question correct by choosing B on what I could infer from the stimulus, but almost chose E.

What deterred me from E was the conditional language; as if all new medical discoveries that go through the process as stated in the stimulus will make it out and help patients. However, I'm still not sure why E could be wrong.

[ohthatpatrick]

Let me put up a complete explanation.

Question Type: Inference

Task: Read the info provided. Consider whether any claims can be sythesized. Pick the safest, most provable answer.

Tendencies: The correct answer usually pulls two or more pieces of info together, so as you read it's good to lookout for opportunities to synthesize information. Other than that, I read for
-conditional language
-causal language
-quantitative language

Because those are frequently hints about where the correct answer may be coming from.

For example, the first and second sentence here have causal connector language: consequently.

You could create a safe Inference answer by combining those, like "the regulation of new therapeutic agents entering the marketplace has at least some importance in efforts to improve US health care".

There is also a conditional language word, only in the final sentence that gives us this rule

Before transfer --> new therapies can't help patients.

Ultimately, though, we're at the mercy of the answer choices. We want to beware the same sort of language traps we encounter in Reading Comp and in Necessary Assumption
- too strong
- a comparison that wasn't made
- out of scope

(A) This is saying, "First, a therapeutic agent is marketed. Then, it is the FDA's job to ensure that it gets regulated." We don't have that timeline anywhere in the passage. We don't have anything about new drugs being marketed. Introducing something into the marketplace ≠ marketing something. I could self-publish an e-book on Amazon. That would constitute introducing something into the marketplace, but unless I promote the book in some way (or hire someone to do so), I haven't marketed the book. The timeline of this answer is backwards. The FDA is responsible for ensuring that any agent introduced to the market is regulated. Once it is an available commodity, then the company that owns it may choose to market it, but the idea of "marketing a drug/agent" is not found anywhere in the passage.

(B) Very strong, but this comes off the last sentence. We CAN justify "before market, they do NOT help patients" because the last sentence is of conditional strength. ONLY after transfer to marketplace can they help. (notice, this still does a little bit of synthesis because you have to know that "the transfer" refers to "the transfer of new discoveries to the marketplace").

(C) EXCESSIVELY long testing period? We heard it's a long testing period, but how do we justify excessive?

(D) "should"? This was all fact. There was no opinion. It's also demanding a comparison/distinction we never discussed: HOW closely the FDA works with researchers.

(E) This is the illegal negation of the last sentence. The last sentence said
if not yet in marketplace --> can't help

(E) says
once in marketplace --> will help

In addition to being bad conditional logic, it's also too strong. The last sentence is only speaking about whether something can/can't help, not about whether it will/won't help.

Hope this helps.

[BarryM800]

Can anyone elaborate why (A) is wrong? Pat's explanation: "Too strong. 'Any.' How can we justify that?"

The first sentence in the stimulus: "... FDA regulates the introduction of new therapeutic agents into the marketplace." I don't see why we can't interpret that to mean FDA regulates the introduction of ALL/ANY new therapeutic agents.

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, that explanation was dumb. I just edited it in the original post. Thanks.