Q3 - Dario: The government should continue to grant

[Laura Damone]

Question Type:
ID the Disagreement

Stimulus Breakdown:
Dario: patents on new drug compounds promote innovation through rewarding companies for expensive research, so the government should keep granting them. Cynthia: it's cheaper to tweak an existing formula than to make a new one, and if the drug companies can get a patent for doing the former, they're gonna do more of that. So, the government should only grant patents for drugs with totally new formulas.

Answer Anticipation:
Cynthia seems to accept Dario's premise that patents spur innovation. But she disagrees about which new drug compounds deserve a patent. Dario says they all do. Cynthia thinks only the really innovative ones do.

Correct answer:
B

Answer choice analysis:
(A) If you posed this as a question to both speakers, they'd both answer yes, so it's a point of agreement, not disagreement.

(B) If you posed this as a question to both speakers, Dario would say yes and Cynthia would say no. That's a surefire sign the answer is correct.

(C) If you posed this as a question to both speakers, they'd both answer yes again, so it's another point of agreement.

(D) If you posed this as a question to both speakers, Cynthia would say yes, but Dario hasn't weighed in. If either of the two speakers hasn't weighed in on an answer, it's wrong.

(E) Another point of agreement! Dario says this explicitly in the second line, and Cynthia implies it when she cites promoting innovation as the reason for her argument about drug patents.

Takeaway/Pattern:
For ID the Disagreement questions, identify what part of the first speaker's argument the second speaker is responding to, then use the Interview Technique to assess the answers, posing each choice as a question to the speakers and assessing whether they would agree, disagree, or haven't weighed in.

#officialexplanation

[CynthiaL54]

Hi,

I ended up choosing B) after eliminating the answer choices. But wouldn't Dario and Cynthia both say "no" to B)?

Dario states that the government should continue to grant patents for all NEW drug compounds. What if someone applies for a patent for an already existing compound that was made many years ago? Isn't Dario just arguing that the new ones should be granted patents?