Critical Reasoning

With the increased importance of the country's top research universities to the development of groundbreaking new medical procedures, and the resulting financially lucrative patents, it was feared that the universities would impose strict limitations on their faculty about the sharing of research with other institutions. Aside from being antithetical to the free exchange of ideas expected in an educational setting, these limitations would have the more insidious effect of slowing the development of potentially life-saving medical technology.

Which of the following, if true, would tend to most seriously weaken the prediction of technological stagnation described above?

A)Medical research conducted by academic institutions has developed some technologies that are of major practical importance to every hospital and care facility in the country.

B)When the results of medical research are not shared, governmental institutions are unable to build on those results.

C)While it may not seem troublesome for corporate institutions to profit off of the patents on their technological developments, it is morally questionable that the same activity takes place at an academic institution, given the importance most universities put on unbiased research.

D)To enhance their standing in the medical and academic communities, and their ability to win future research grants, the universities encourage their faculty to publish their results on a regular basis in all of the standard medical journals.

E)Academic institutions often devote some of their financial and human resources to researching purely academic scientific questions, and this research is normally not expected to produce any new technologies or otherwise make money for the university.

OA after a little discussion !

Updated : OA D

IMO (D).

The argument is that the research universities shall not allow the faculty to share their research with other institutions.

A)Medical research conducted by academic institutions has developed some technologies that are of major practical importance to every hospital and care facility in the country. --> This is already stated in the argument.

B)When the results of medical research are not shared, governmental institutions are unable to build on those results. --> Irrelevant again because we are not concerned about what happens when the results are not shared.

C)While it may not seem troublesome for corporate institutions to profit off of the patents on their technological developments, it is morally questionable that the same activity takes place at an academic institution, given the importance most universities put on unbiased research. -->

D)To enhance their standing in the medical and academic communities, and their ability to win future research grants, the universities encourage their faculty to publish their results on a regular basis in all of the standard medical journals. --> weakens because it clearly states that universities DO have an incentive to share research.

E)Academic institutions often devote some of their financial and human resources to researching purely academic scientific questions, and this research is normally not expected to produce any new technologies or otherwise make money for the university. --> Again what is being researched upon is irrelevant. At best, it is a strengthener because it adds to the claims that the research material is important.

My doubt is that the passage says

With the increased importance of the country's top research universities to the development of groundbreaking new medical procedures, and the resulting financially lucrative patents, it was feared that the universities would impose strict limitations on their faculty about the sharing of research with other institutions

This means that the incentive behind their disallowing the sharing was the RESULTING LUCRATIVE PATENTS which would come as a result of development of groundbreaking medical procedures .

So B) states that if they dont share the results of research, they are not able to build on the results.

Doesnt this weaken the cause affect relation ? because if they dont build on the results, it implies no development of technology ,hence no patents and the fear becomes unsubstantiated then !

We are more concerned with whether Universities are sharing their research or not. what government institutions were not able to do without them is out of scope.

user123321

Aaah ! i was tricked into reading universities instead of government institutions.

Would have been a contender i guess if it was universities instead of government institutions in the choice ?

no...it will strengthen the conclusion that universities are not sharing research.

user12321

sohrabkalra wrote:With the increased importance of the country's top research universities to the development of groundbreaking new medical procedures, and the resulting financially lucrative patents, it was feared that the universities would impose strict limitations on their faculty about the sharing of research with other institutions. Aside from being antithetical to the free exchange of ideas expected in an educational setting, these limitations would have the more insidious effect of slowing the development of potentially life-saving medical technology.

Which of the following, if true, would tend to most seriously weaken the prediction of technological stagnation described above?

D)To enhance their standing in the medical and academic communities, and their ability to win future research grants, the universities encourage their faculty to publish their results on a regular basis in all of the standard medical journals.


OA after a little discussion !

Updated : OA D

Choice D is clearly stated that the universities have to public their research in order to win the future grants. So, the claims that the universities limit on sharing their research are wrong. Weaken the conclusion.