The rate at which psychiatrists in different regions ...

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The rate at which psychiatrists in different regions administer many prescription drugs shows massive variation - up to a fifty-fold dissimilarity per million patients in the numbers of antidepressant, anti-bipolar, and anti-psychotic medications prescribed.


To support a conclusion that much of the variation is due to unnecessary prescription of drugs, it would be necessary to establish which of the following?


A
Every psychiatrist is supervised by a regional review board, which checks the record of every patient to confirm that the prescription drug was necessary.


B
The dissimilarity is unrelated to regional factors (other than the prescription drugs themselves) that influence the incidence of diseases for which prescription drugs might be considered.

C
There are several classes of prescription drugs (other than antidepressant, anti-bipolar, and anti-psychotic ones) that are often administered unnecessarily.
ust examples.
D
For certain prescription drugs, it is difficult to determine after the treatment whether the drug was necessary or whether an alternative treatment would have been effective.

E
The prescribing of antidepressant, anti-bipolar, and anti-psychotic drugs is representative of prescription drugs generally with respect to how often they are prescribed unnecessarily.
Source: — Critical Reasoning |

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by aditya8062 » Tue Mar 05, 2013 9:37 pm
my take wud be B .you got to eliminate all the rest of reasons that might lead to this dissimilarity to prove that this dissimilarity is only due to the reason mentioned in the passage

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by hemant_rajput » Tue Mar 05, 2013 9:56 pm
IMO D.
I'm no expert, just trying to work on my skills. If I've made any mistakes please bear with me.

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by himu » Wed Mar 06, 2013 8:26 pm
B
The dissimilarity is unrelated to regional factors (other than the prescription drugs themselves) that influence the incidence of diseases for which prescription drugs might be considered.
This is the credited response; the challenge is in understanding the convoluted phrasing. It means: Here, the difference in prescriptions is unrelated to regional differences in mental illness (ruling out a possible alternate explanation), which would justify prescribing different drugs. Therefore, if the over-medication does not depend on regional difference, then the psychologist regional over-prescription is plausible.