PT121 · S1 · Q20 Researcher: We have found that

I'll be honest, I've never really seen an answer like this. I don't even know what correlation between stress and all cases of high blood pressure this answer is referring to. There was no such correlation discussed in the argument, so, no, the author wasn't assuming anything about some correlation that was never even discussed.

The author is assuming that "sometimes (in the case of these people treated with meds) one's blood pressure is lowered by means other than the reduction of stress". But this is talking about reduction of stress lowering blood pressure. If we negated this answer, it would say "reducing stress can never lower one's blood pressure", and that would actually strengthen the argument, since the author is assuming that the people whose blood pressure was lowered with medicine did not have it lowered by reducing stress.

Out of Scope: effects of reducing stress Whenever Necessary Assumption answers use ruling out language like "not / no", it's worth slowing down and negating them to see if they turn into an objection. Would it weaken the argument for us to say, Reduced stress does reduce a person's responsiveness to blood pressure medicine? No that doesn't really have anything to do with this argument. Our only real way to object to this argument is to say, "Hey, author — it's possible that these cases of high blood pressure were caused by stress, and the medicine was effective because it reduced the stress." Negating this answer gives us a scenario where reduced stress came first and then low responsiveness to meds comes second. We want to weaken this author by suggesting a scenario where responsiveness to meds comes first and leads to reduced stress.

This feels some what close to our assumption: "If treating effectively with meds, then not reducing stress". But this is talking about whether or not a condition is treatable via stress reduction, and in the argument she is assuming that a condition isn't being treated by stress reduction (not that it couldn't be treated by stress reduction). She's never assuming that there are conditions that can't be treated through reduction of stress. She is just assuming that when we treat something with medicine, we are not treating via reducing stress. She's not trying to prove anything about what treatment options are available. She's trying to prove a claim about what causes a condition. To prove that a condition isn't caused by stress, she just needs to show that it can be effectively treated without reducing stress. She doesn't need to to show that it can't be effectively treated by reducing stress.