Q4 - Doctor: The practice of using this therapy to treat the

[Crogati]

I understand that for analyze argument structure questions generally we do not need to evaluate the core, but I feel like this question required a little more deep thinking...

That said, I am having difficulty evaluating the core. During my first go at the this question I understood (E) as the correct answer in a sort of vague way and I think (D) is too strong and mixes up parts of the argument but I have a hunch there is a better way to eliminate this choice.

Here is how I understand the core:

The claim that therapy for treating illness is more effective than no therapy at all is NOT sufficient to support the practice of therapy.

Why?

Because therapy is expensive and complicated.

- OR written more formally -

Therapy --> expensive and complicated (-E or -C --> -therapy)

THUS,

Effectiveness of therapy -/-> practice of therapy.

...Huh?

[ohthatpatrick]

Take if from someone who loves diagramming: you're over-diagramming.

There's absolutely no reason you will EVER need to diagram a main conclusion question.

All we have to do on Main Conclusion questions is identify the conclusion.

This argument only has two ideas, so we're either saying the first sentence is the conclusion and the second the premise, or vice versa.

Using the Why Test is a great idea for these problems, just to make sure we've identified the proper conclusion.

And you clearly agree that the 1st sentence is the conclusion and the 2nd is the premise.

So now that we've identified that the first sentence is the conclusion, we're just looking for an answer choice that is a tight paraphrase of the first sentence.

(A) That's PART of the first sentence, but the entire first sentence is actually REJECTING this rationale.

(B) This comparison is never made.

(C) This comparison is never made.

(D) This sounds like someone trying to get an Inference by combining the 1st sentence and the 2nd sentence. This is definitely not a paraphrase of the 1st sentence, which doesn't even mention expense/complexity.

(E) This is just a paraphrase of the 1st sentence.
"not sufficient justification for" = "cannot be adequately supported by"

A lot of students want to make Main Conclusion more complex than it is. Just identify which claim is the conclusion and then find THAT claim in the answer choices.

(And if you don't already know this, in 95% of Main Conclusion questions, the conclusion is either the first sentence or in the middle after a BUT/YET/HOWEVER)

Hope this helps.

[Crogati]

Thanks for the explanation. Wow, you are so right. I totally over thought that one. I must have been going a little batty after evaluating too many arguments. Looking at the question again, the wrong answers seem so obviously wrong!

[FarOutsidetheBox]

Everyone seems to be saying that E is a perfect paraphrase of the conclusion. I don't see it, can someone please explain?

The conclusion says that "the fact that something is better than nothing is not a god enough reason to use the therapy," this is not the same as saying it isn't effective, it's just saying THAT argument isn't enough (because it's also complicated and expensive). What if the therapy also has the possibility to be extremely effective, might it not then be justified despite the expense? The argument doesn't say.

Look at it this way: you're in a restaurant and thinking of ordering the lobster. Your friend says "just so you know, the fact that any food tastes better than garbage isn't reason enough to order the lobster, because the lobster is expensive." Wouldn't the perfect counter be: "that's true, but the lobster is ALSO might be delicious, so I'm not just ordering it because 'anything is better than garbage'; but because I know THIS food is good"

[csunnerberg13]

Everyone seems to be saying that E is a perfect paraphrase of the conclusion. I don't see it, can someone please explain?

The conclusion says that "the fact that something is better than nothing is not a god enough reason to use the therapy," this is not the same as saying it isn't effective, it's just saying THAT argument isn't enough (because it's also complicated and expensive). What if the therapy also has the possibility to be extremely effective, might it not then be justified despite the expense? The argument doesn't say.

Look at it this way: you're in a restaurant and thinking of ordering the lobster. Your friend says "just so you know, the fact that any food tastes better than garbage isn't reason enough to order the lobster, because the lobster is expensive." Wouldn't the perfect counter be: "that's true, but the lobster is ALSO might be delicious, so I'm not just ordering it because 'anything is better than garbage'; but because I know THIS food is good"

Good question. I think where you've gone wrong is just overlooking a small but important detail. This stimulus never actually says that the treatment is effective. What it actually says is, The concept that doing SOMETHING is better than doing NOTHING does not justify choosing this treatment method. We have no idea about the effectiveness of the treatment we are discussing. All we have to go on is that somebody (we don't even know who) has claimed that doing something is better than nothing. Well what if the thing we choose to do (so that we aren't just doing nothing) has catastrophic effects? As the doctor says, we can't just say, in that case, that doing something is better than doing nothing. So in your lobster analogy - the difference is that you knew the lobster would be good, whereas we don't actually know much about the effectiveness of the treatment we could be choosing.

The doctor's argument basically says

Premise ---> Conclusion
We must consider THEREFORE, the idea that something is
that this therapy ---> better than nothing is not the only
is expensive and consideration we need to think about.
complicated

(E) paraphrases this by saying - "The therapy's possible (indicates that we're not totally positive that it will work - just that there's a possibility; i.e. - something is better than nothing) effectiveness in treating this illness is not sufficient (BECAUSE we must also consider these other issues)

Hope that helps

[FarOutsidetheBox]

The conclusion says that "the fact that something is better than nothing is not a god enough reason to use the therapy," this is not the same as saying it isn't effective, it's just saying THAT argument isn't enough (because it's also complicated and expensive). What if the therapy also has the possibility to be extremely effective, might it not then be justified despite the expense? The argument doesn't say.

Look at it this way: you're in a restaurant and thinking of ordering the lobster. Your friend says "just so you know, the fact that any food tastes better than garbage isn't reason enough to order the lobster, because the lobster is expensive." Wouldn't the perfect counter be: "that's true, but the lobster is ALSO might be delicious, so I'm not just ordering it because 'anything is better than garbage'; but because I know THIS food is good"

Good question. I think where you've gone wrong is just overlooking a small but important detail. This stimulus never actually says that the treatment is effective. What it actually says is, The concept that doing SOMETHING is better than doing NOTHING does not justify choosing this treatment method. We have no idea about the effectiveness of the treatment we are discussing.

I think you are missing my point. I am not claiming that the therapy is effective. What I'm saying is we have no clue and the doctor certainly hasn't given us any clue. Therefore, it's ridiculous to say that the doctor's conclusion is that it isn't effective enough to justify its use.

This isn't an inference question, this is a conclusion question. What is the doctor SAYING. What the doctor is saying is that one very specific possible reason to use the therapy (the fact that anything is better than nothing) isn't good enough. That's all he says. Maybe he thinks it's garbage and we shouldn't use it; maybe he thinks it happens to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and we should all use it. My question is: how can they jump from saying "this reason isn't good enough" to saying "it isn't effective enough to justify its use"?

[matthew.mainen]

You've misread the answer choice. It doesn't say "it isn't effective enough to justify its use?" It's saying the treatment's possible effectiveness is not sufficient to justify its use. In other words, looking at effectiveness alone will not tell us whether the treatment should be used because there are other things to consider, like cost and complication.

[alexroark5]

The conclusion says that "the fact that something is better than nothing is not a god enough reason to use the therapy," this is not the same as saying it isn't effective, it's just saying THAT argument isn't enough (because it's also complicated and expensive). What if the therapy also has the possibility to be extremely effective, might it not then be justified despite the expense? The argument doesn't say.

Look at it this way: you're in a restaurant and thinking of ordering the lobster. Your friend says "just so you know, the fact that any food tastes better than garbage isn't reason enough to order the lobster, because the lobster is expensive." Wouldn't the perfect counter be: "that's true, but the lobster is ALSO might be delicious, so I'm not just ordering it because 'anything is better than garbage'; but because I know THIS food is good"

Good question. I think where you've gone wrong is just overlooking a small but important detail. This stimulus never actually says that the treatment is effective. What it actually says is, The concept that doing SOMETHING is better than doing NOTHING does not justify choosing this treatment method. We have no idea about the effectiveness of the treatment we are discussing.

I think you are missing my point. I am not claiming that the therapy is effective. What I'm saying is we have no clue and the doctor certainly hasn't given us any clue. Therefore, it's ridiculous to say that the doctor's conclusion is that it isn't effective enough to justify its use.

This isn't an inference question, this is a conclusion question. What is the doctor SAYING. What the doctor is saying is that one very specific possible reason to use the therapy (the fact that anything is better than nothing) isn't good enough. That's all he says. Maybe he thinks it's garbage and we shouldn't use it; maybe he thinks it happens to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and we should all use it. My question is: how can they jump from saying "this reason isn't good enough" to saying "it isn't effective enough to justify its use"?

What the author is saying is this: We should not decide whether or not to use this treatment based on whether or not it is effective. There are other considerations that we need to take into account, like how expensive it is. That is exactly what E is saying. That whether or not the treatment is effective is not enough by itself to decide whether or not to use the treatment.