Critical Reasoning

Of patients over 65 years old who survived coronary bypass surgery-a procedure widely prescribed for people with heart disease-only 75 percent benefited from the surgery. Thus it appears that for one in four such patients, the doctors who advised them to undergo this surgery, with its attendant risks and expense, were more interested in an opportunity to practice their skills and in their fee than in helping the patient.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the argument?

A.Many of the patients who receive coronary bypass surgery are less than 55 years old.

B.Possible benefits of coronary bypass surgery include both relief from troubling symptoms and prolongation of life.

C.Most of the patients in the survey decided to undergo coronary bypass surgery because they were advised that the surgery would reduce their risk of future heart attacks.

D.The patients over 65 years old who did not benefit from the coronary bypass surgery were as fully informed as those who did benefit from the surgery as to the risks of the surgery prior to undergoing it.

E.The patients who underwent coronary bypass surgery but who did not benefit from it were medically indistinguishable, prior to their surgery, from the patients who did benefit.

IMO -- E ..

Prteety starightforward right,,,:-)

Shawshank wrote:IMO -- E ..

Prteety starightforward right,,,:-)

Sorry...May I ask you to please explain the reasoning ?

Because
E.The patients who underwent coronary bypass surgery but who did not benefit from it were medically indistinguishable, prior to their surgery, from the patients who did benefit.

If the were medically indistinguishable...then the argument is strengthened ??

What am I missing here ?

Hey Nikhil,

I understand the confusion here.

Firstly, E is the right answer

The idea here is to weaken the argument that the doctors had some vested interests.
Allegation is being made on the doctor that they performed the surgery only to practice and make money
But this would have been true had the doctors known which patient actually needs the surgery and which patient does'nt !

E explains this idea well

hope this helps !!


- Ashish

I am caught btw D and E.
I am not sure what the OA is, but i ruled out D because, the argument mentions of the surviving patients, ie all the categories of patients were informed about the operation risk. This point (risk) is not the essence of the argument. The argument focuses on the set of surviving people.
In drawing this conclusion, the author assumes that surviving patients undergoing operations are medically fit. But if we show that all patients (surviving and non surviving) were medically fit, the assumption fails and the statement weakens.

I am confused ......OA PLz.....

all the reasoning provided make sense

nikhilkatira wrote:Of patients over 65 years old who survived coronary bypass surgery-a procedure widely prescribed for people with heart disease-only 75 percent benefited from the surgery. Thus it appears that for one in four such patients, the doctors who advised them to undergo this surgery, with its attendant risks and expense, were more interested in an opportunity to practice their skills and in their fee than in helping the patient.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the argument?

A.Many of the patients who receive coronary bypass surgery are less than 55 years old.

B.Possible benefits of coronary bypass surgery include both relief from troubling symptoms and prolongation of life.

C.Most of the patients in the survey decided to undergo coronary bypass surgery because they were advised that the surgery would reduce their risk of future heart attacks.

D.The patients over 65 years old who did not benefit from the coronary bypass surgery were as fully informed as those who did benefit from the surgery as to the risks of the surgery prior to undergoing it.

E.The patients who underwent coronary bypass surgery but who did not benefit from it were medically indistinguishable, prior to their surgery, from the patients who did benefit.

E just out of scope here. who cares how diffirent between people who benefit from the surgery and the people who did not?
D should be the answer+

OA is E

nikhilkatira wrote:Of patients over 65 years old who survived coronary bypass surgery-a procedure widely prescribed for people with heart disease-only 75 percent benefited from the surgery. Thus it appears that for one in four such patients, the doctors who advised them to undergo this surgery, with its attendant risks and expense, were more interested in an opportunity to practice their skills and in their fee than in helping the patient.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the argument?

A.Many of the patients who receive coronary bypass surgery are less than 55 years old.

B.Possible benefits of coronary bypass surgery include both relief from troubling symptoms and prolongation of life.

C.Most of the patients in the survey decided to undergo coronary bypass surgery because they were advised that the surgery would reduce their risk of future heart attacks.

D.The patients over 65 years old who did not benefit from the coronary bypass surgery were as fully informed as those who did benefit from the surgery as to the risks of the surgery prior to undergoing it.

E.The patients who underwent coronary bypass surgery but who did not benefit from it were medically indistinguishable, prior to their surgery, from the patients who did benefit.

The conclusion here is the last sentence: the doctors were more interested in practicing their skills and making money than in helping the 1 in 4 patients who did not benefit from the surgery. This assumes without providing justification that there's no other reason that doctors would perform the surgery on people who did not benefit from it. However, E weakens the argument by explaining that there was no way to know who would or wouldn't benefit from the surgery; prior to the surgery, all of the patients seemed the same, so until they actually operated and saw the outcome, the doctos had no idea which patients would see good results and which ones wouldn't. Therefore, they weren't necessarily trying to practice their skills and make money on the 25% that didn't see good results. They might have really been trying to help everyone, and 25% of the time, they just failed for some reason.

wonderfully explained Andrea.

Andrea is a rock star

Just wanted to note that the question says "undermines." I ran into a student recently who was working on CR quickly with good accuracy but was beginning to make simple mistakes like mistaking "undermines" for "underlies."

"undermines" = weakens argument

"underlies" = basis for argument, supports

Good to watch out for those two very close-looking words!

yeah... thanx... registered in my LTM!

"undermines" = weakens argument

"underlies" = basis for argument, supports

Nikhil, Please tell the source of the question.

grockit_andrea wrote:

nikhilkatira wrote:Of patients over 65 years old who survived coronary bypass surgery-a procedure widely prescribed for people with heart disease-only 75 percent benefited from the surgery. Thus it appears that for one in four such patients, the doctors who advised them to undergo this surgery, with its attendant risks and expense, were more interested in an opportunity to practice their skills and in their fee than in helping the patient.

Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the argument?

A.Many of the patients who receive coronary bypass surgery are less than 55 years old.

B.Possible benefits of coronary bypass surgery include both relief from troubling symptoms and prolongation of life.

C.Most of the patients in the survey decided to undergo coronary bypass surgery because they were advised that the surgery would reduce their risk of future heart attacks.

D.The patients over 65 years old who did not benefit from the coronary bypass surgery were as fully informed as those who did benefit from the surgery as to the risks of the surgery prior to undergoing it.

E.The patients who underwent coronary bypass surgery but who did not benefit from it were medically indistinguishable, prior to their surgery, from the patients who did benefit.

The conclusion here is the last sentence: the doctors were more interested in practicing their skills and making money than in helping the 1 in 4 patients who did not benefit from the surgery. This assumes without providing justification that there's no other reason that doctors would perform the surgery on people who did not benefit from it. However, E weakens the argument by explaining that there was no way to know who would or wouldn't benefit from the surgery; prior to the surgery, all of the patients seemed the same, so until they actually operated and saw the outcome, the doctos had no idea which patients would see good results and which ones wouldn't. Therefore, they weren't necessarily trying to practice their skills and make money on the 25% that didn't see good results. They might have really been trying to help everyone, and 25% of the time, they just failed for some reason.

Hi Andrea,

Can u please tell me the flaw in my logic ?

For option E: according to my logic, it strengthens the conclusion.

All the patients are medically indistinguishable and they are operated on by the doctors. The result should have been 100 % success. Because all the patients have same medical condition and the doctors are not experimenting and do not have profit motive.

But the actual result is 75% success and 25% failure. Since patients are medically indistinguishable, it means that doctors didn't do their job well. The doctors experimented or had profit motive in my mind. Else there was no chance of failure.
PATIENTS (INDISTINGUISHABLE)---->OPERATED BY "____" DOCS-----> SUCCESS/FAILURE

PATIENTS (INDISTINGUISHABLE) --->OPERATED BY "GOOD" DOCS------> SUCCESS( 75 %)

PATIENTS(INDISTINGUISHABLE)---->OPERATED BY "BAD" DOCS--------> FAILURE( 25 %)

Why not D?

As per D, the patients who did not benefit were as aware of the risks as the ones who benefited. So this takes the blame off of the doctors.