Therapists

[akhpad]

Therapists find that treatment of those people who seek help because they are unable to stop smoking or overeating is rarely successful. From these experiences, therapists have concluded that such habits are intractable, and success in breaking them is rare. As surveys show, millions of people have dropped the habit of smoking, and many people have successfully managed a substantial weight loss.

If all of the statements are correct, an Explanation of their apparent contradiction is provided by the hypothesis that

A. there have been some successes in therapy, and those successes were counted in the surveys
B. it is easier to stop smoking than it is to stop overeating
C. it is easy to break the habits of smoking and overeating by exercising willpower
D. the group of people selected for the survey did not include those who failed to break their habits even after therapy
E. those who succeed in curing themselves do not go for treatment and so are not included in the therapists' data

OA: E

I confused over D and E.
In D, the only unwanted thing is that they mentioned "the group of people" instead of actual number.

Can someone explain in detail that how e is better than d?

[kvcpk]

My First thought was D too.. But after careful look at it, D is not so close to the answer.
Let me explain:

The conclusion of the passage is mainly laid out by 2 statements:
1. Therapists assumption based on their experiences
2. Survey results

We need to find a statement that contradicts either of these two so that there will not be any discrepancy in our final conclusion.

D says: the group of people selected for the survey did not include those who failed to break their habits even after therapy

What if it included these people?

Survey results only show that "millions of people have dropped the habit of smoking". It doesnot mention any percentage or "most". Millions is not a relative term. it is a constant.
Hence there would not be any effect even if option D was correct.

On the other hand, Option E contradicts the statement1, by saying that the therapists did not include some people in their experience results.

Hope this helps

[this_time_i_will]

From D we may infer that the survey includes those people who quit their habit after therapy. And if as per stem, such people are millions (for our argument sake or commonsense, we may take millions to mean significant number of people .Just one instance where D fails would be sufficient to rule out D.) in number then the Physio's claim that the treatment is rare no more holds true. A inference that goes agianst the given stem.

[akhpad]

Yes, kvcpk is right. I also believe so.

Option D seems to be a tricky for me.