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The proposal to extend clinical trials

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The proposal to extend clinical trials

by paes » Wed Jul 07, 2010 6:41 pm
The proposal to extend clinical trials, which are routinely used as systematic tests of pharmaceutical innovations, to new surgical procedures should not be implemented. The point is that surgical procedures differ in one important respect from medicinal drugs: a correctly prescribed drug depends for its effectiveness only on the drug's composition, whereas the effectiveness of even the most appropriate surgical procedure is transparently related to the skills of the surgeon who uses it.

The reasoning in the argument is flawed because the argument

(A) does not consider that new surgical procedures might be found to be intrinsically more harmful than the best treatment previously available

(B) ignores the possibility that the challenged proposal is deliberately crude in a way designed to elicit criticism to be used in refining the proposal

(C) assumes that a surgeon's skills remain unchanged throughout the surgeon's professional life

(D) describes a dissimilarity without citing any scientific evidence for the existence of that dissimilarity

(E) rejects a proposal presumably advanced in good faith without acknowledging any such good faith

[spoiler]OA later.
Please explain your answers.[/spoiler]
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by apex231 » Wed Jul 07, 2010 8:11 pm
A looks good.

The point made in the argument is that the new surgical procedure should be throughly tested before its introduction. However, the counter argument focuses on the skills of the doctors.

The other options appear irrelevant.
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by paddle_sweep » Wed Jul 07, 2010 8:18 pm
I will go with 'E'. Pls quote the source and OA.
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by paes » Wed Jul 07, 2010 9:07 pm
apex231 wrote:A looks good.

The point made in the argument is that the new surgical procedure should be throughly tested before its introduction. However, the counter argument focuses on the skills of the doctors.

The other options appear irrelevant.
I am not seeing the point "new surgical procedure should be throughly tested before its introduction" in the argument.

The point is :
The proposal to extend clinical trials, <>, to new surgical procedures should not be implemented.

Reason:
It depends on doctor's skills, unlike medicines.

Flaw :
I don't find any logical flaw here.

Can you explain your reasoning more.
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by paes » Wed Jul 07, 2010 9:08 pm
OA is A
Source : LSAT tests
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by apex231 » Wed Jul 07, 2010 9:18 pm
paes wrote:
apex231 wrote:A looks good.

The point made in the argument is that the new surgical procedure should be throughly tested before its introduction. However, the counter argument focuses on the skills of the doctors.

The other options appear irrelevant.
I am not seeing the point "new surgical procedure should be throughly tested before its introduction" in the argument.

The point is :
The proposal to extend clinical trials, <>, to new surgical procedures should not be implemented.

Reason:
It depends on doctor's skills, unlike medicines.

Flaw :
I don't find any logical flaw here.

Can you explain your reasoning more.
The argument states that the effectiveness of surgical procedures depends on the skills of the surgeon, but that doesn't mean that any new surgical procedure (irrespective of of surgeon's skill) will be more effective than the already existing surgical procedures. So thorough testing of new surgical procedures is also important to make sure that they are as good as the existing surgical procedures. The argument misses this point completely and only considers the skill of a surgeon in assessing the effectiveness of surgical procedures.
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by paes » Wed Jul 07, 2010 9:27 pm
Thanks Apex.
I agree with your reasoning.

But my point is that :

A proposal can be rejected because of many reasons, such as in this case :

1st reason : As (A) says : new procedure can be harmful than the old one
2nd reason : as argument says : doctor's ability to implement it.
3rd reason : my own : cost will be beyond the reach
4th reason : blah-blah ....
and son on

So, for a flaw problem, we should prove the the reasoning given by the argument is not correct.
But A is not giving any such fact.
What do you think ??
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by apex231 » Wed Jul 07, 2010 10:10 pm
The way I look at it is - why are extend clinical trials required? - to make sure that the new surgical procedures are effective. It doesn't matter if the new procedure costs more or whether all doctors can implement it successfully. All we are concerned about is the effectiveness of the new surgical procedure.

So the proposal for extended clinical trials can be rejected if its already established that the new surgical procedures are as effective as the existing ones. However, this can't be assumed and the argument assumes so, associating effectiveness of a surgical procedure to a surgeon's skill alone.
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by kvcpk » Wed Jul 07, 2010 11:49 pm
I could pick A only by POE. Unable to see why A is right. Please help. here is my analysis.

Premises:
The proposal to extend clinical trials to new surgical procedures should not be implemented.
a correctly prescribed drug depends for its effectiveness only on the drug's composition
effectiveness of even the most appropriate surgical procedure is transparently related to the skills of the surgeon who uses it.

(A) does not consider that new surgical procedures might be found to be intrinsically more harmful than the best treatment previously available

The passage actually considers that surgical procedures are more harmful. Isnt it so?

(B) ignores the possibility that the challenged proposal is deliberately crude in a way designed to elicit criticism to be used in refining the proposal

What is the challenged proposal?
The proposal to extend clinical trials to new surgical procedures.
The wordings look more clumsy in this option..Let us break it down.

ignores the possibility that the proposal to extend clinical trials to new surgical procedures is deliberately crude
Is this correct? NO. The passage is considering the possibility. Not ignoring.

(C) assumes that a surgeon's skills remain unchanged throughout the surgeon's professional life

This option is introducing a new item into question. "professional life". Stimulus doesnt discuss this element. Flawed reasoning question cannot invtroduce new elements.

(D) describes a dissimilarity without citing any scientific evidence for the existence of that dissimilarity.
The argument is actually describing a proposal for the extension of clinical trials to surgical procedures. It is not trying to compare both of them as such. Yet, even if it is taken as a similrity/dissimiliarity case, we are being provided with enough scientific evidence that "a correctly prescribed drug depends for its effectiveness only on the drug's composition,whereas....". What we are not provided with is statistical evidence. I believe The option would have been close if it said statistical evidence.
Please correct me if i am wrong.

(E) rejects a proposal presumably advanced in good faith without acknowledging any such good faith

The argument is rejecting a proposal. This is true. But this statement again intoduces new elements "good faith" which is not addressed in the stimulus.

Please let me know your views.

Praveen
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by paes » Thu Jul 08, 2010 3:06 am
KVCPK,

I can eliminate A also by POE.
See my explanation above.

I am able to discard B, C, D and E.

But A was also not looking a answer to me.
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by kvcpk » Thu Jul 08, 2010 3:39 am
Request experts to provide insight??
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by Stacey Koprince » Sat Jul 10, 2010 10:57 am
Received a PM asking me to respond.

paes, please cite the source in your very first post in future. Thanks.

Now that I'm done, I'm coming back to the top of my post to add this: if you are taking the LSAT, this is a good one to study. This kind of problem and reasoning does not often appear on the GMAT however, so if you are taking the GMAT, this one's not a good use of your time.

Q: Why is the reasoning flawed?
A:
Clinical trials used to test drugs
Do not extend clinical trials to new surgical procedures.
Because there is a major difference between surgical procedures and drugs: Drug effectiveness depends only on the drug itself, assuming it is correctly prescribed, but surgical procedure effectiveness depends also (not only) on how good the surgeon is.

The last sentence specifically discusses the effectiveness of a drug vs. the effectiveness of a surgical procedure (SP). It claims that the drug's effectiveness is based only on itself, while the SP's effectiveness depends upon the surgeon's skill (but not ONLY the surgeon's skill - that's just one factor in the procedure's effectiveness). Then, the author concludes that a method used to test drugs shouldn't be used to test SPs.

Here's the problem: The effectiveness of the surgical procedure depends on at least two things: the procedure itself (logically, this must be true) and the surgeon's skills (according to the argument - and we can understand why logically).

Clinical trials are used to test the drugs themselves.
If clinical trials were extended to SPs, then they would presumably also be used to test the procedures themselves.

The author rejects the use of clinical trials because there is a second factor that influences the SP's effectiveness (skill of surgeon) - but why would that make us NOT want to test the procedure itself? That's an extra influence, but it doesn't remove the need to test the procedure itself.

The author assumes that the procedure itself is already fine. What if it's not?

That's basically what choice A says.
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by paes » Sat Jul 10, 2010 5:46 pm
Thanks Stacey.

I got your point.

Source : LSAT
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