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method and flow Q.,hardest one

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method and flow Q.,hardest one

by tanviet » Mon Nov 17, 2008 5:14 am
Pls, help me explain this question.

Many pregnants women suffer from vitamine deficiency, but this is frequently not due to vitamine deficiency in their diets; most often it is because they have higher requirements for vitamine than do the rest of the population

The best criticism of the reasoning is the statement above is that it

a, fail to specify the percentage of the pregnant women who suffer from vitamine deficiency

b,gives insufficient information about why pregnant women have higher vitamine requirements than do other groups

c, fails to employ the same reference group for both uses of the term "vitamine deficiency"

d, provides insufficient information about the incidence of vitamine deficiency in other groups with high vitamine requirements

e,uses "higher requirements" in an ambiguous manner

the OA is c, but I do not why, pls, help explain
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by Karen » Tue Nov 18, 2008 12:49 pm
It's C because the argument uses the term vitamin deficiency in two different ways. First it says many pregnant women suffer from vitamin deficiency. So that means vitamin deficiency *for them* -- that is, the pregnant women aren't getting as many vitamins as pregnant women need.

Then it says this isn't due to vitamin deficiency in their diets. Here what the argument is trying to say is that the problem isn't caused by what would be a deficiency by the standards of the normal population -- the pregnant women *are* taking in the amount of vitamins that would normally be enough for non-pregnant women, but it's not enough for them, because pregnant women need more vitamins.

The idea that the argument is attempting to express seems clear enough, but it's expressing it in a muddled way. The first use of the phrase 'vitamin deficiency' obviously defines deficiency relative to what pregnant women need. The second use of the phrase defines deficiency relative to what adults normally need, outside of pregnancy. It makes the text confusing. C sums up the problem.
Karen van Hoek, PhD
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