Logical Reasoning

PT114 · S2 · Q12 Several recent studies establish

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Several recent studies establish that most people would want to be informed if they had any serious medical condition.

Conclusion (establish that)

Most people would want to be informed if they had any serious medical condition.

Evidence

In a bunch of recent studies, over 80 percent of people surveyed said they would want to be told.

Evaluate

Within the survey population, it was true that .

So the only possible way to weaken this argument is to say that the survey population isn't representative: it's too small / it's an atypical group of people / they were biased or pressured into answering a certain way.

Goal

Look for answers that either make this survey seem sketchy, like it wouldn't speak for most people in most situations; it's skewed for some reason.

Or just look for any other answer that suggests that people don't want to be informed if they end up developing a serious medical condition.

12.

Each of the following, if true, weakens the argument EXCEPT:

  1. In another recent study, most

    Weakens

    This is amusingly blunt, but yes, this weakens because it's a study announcing the opposite of what the conclusion says.

    4% picked this

  2. People often do not indicate

    Weakens

    This weakens by making the surveys appealed to by the author seem like less compelling, less trustworthy evidence. If people often don't indicate their true feelings, then can we really trust this survey data to accurately reflect people's true feelings?

    3% picked this

  3. Correct

    Some of the researchers conducting

    Why this is right

    This doesn't hurt the argument at all. We don't need for any of these researchers to have a background of medicine, and this is saying something much softer ("at least one researcher had no background in medicine"). The research, as far as we know, is just an opinion survey. It would be good for such a researcher to have a background in statistics, data science, and maybe interpersonal psychology. But they don't need any background in medicine to find people, give them a survey, and then tabulate survey results.

    Skill tested: Weaken · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    67% picked this

  4. Some questions asked in the

    Weakens

    This answer weakens by making it seem like the study implicitly encouraged / biased respondents to saying "they would want to be informed". If the survey was making the respondents think, "hmm, reasonable people would want to be informed", then since they want to seem like reasonable people themselves, they would assent to the same opinion, even if they didn't really mean it. This makes the surveys being relied on more sketchy, almost like they asked a leading question.

    13% picked this

  5. The people surveyed in the

    Weakens

    Because the survey was drawn from such a specific subset of the population (18-22 year old college students in psych classes), it's way harder to assume that the survey's results are automatically representative of all people. This makes the survey seem sketchy by indicating that it does not have a diverse, representative sample of the population.

    13% picked this

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