Physician: Stories of people developing

Answer choices

1. A

   Weakens, if anything3% picked this

   For the most part, stories of people developing serious health problems shortly after receiving vaccinations involve vaccines

   We tend to trust vaccines that have been around for longer, because once we've had years and years experience administering a vaccine, it's clearer to us which side effects or adverse reactions the vaccine does or doesn't have. It's also unlikely that we would continue using a vaccine if we knew it were causing serious health problems in people. So if the serious health problems were supposedly connected to an older vaccine, we'd be suspicious that the connection is real. However, if they're mainly connected to newer, less proven, less understood vaccines then it helps the case of people who think that the health problems are the result of the vaccines.

   3%
2. B

   No Impact2% picked this

   Some of the illnesses that vaccines are designed to prevent have become so rare that even if people are not vaccinated, they

   This is incredibly weak (some = at least one, so it's almost always wrong on Strengthen, Weaken, Paradox, and Sufficient Assumption). Plus, it has nothing to do with people who are vaccinated, and the argument is about vaccinated people who experienced health problems shortly thereafter.

   2%
3. C

   Correct86% picked this

   People are no more likely, on average, to develop serious health problems shortly after receiving vaccinations than

   Why this is right

   The author is seemingly thinking that vaccines have no effect on people's developing serious health problems. So she would think that people are no more likely to have a health problem before or after. If I think that "Tuesday doesn't make you sick" then I think that people are no more likely, on average, to get sick on a Tuesday than on any other day. This answer does, then, help support the idea that the stories of people getting sick after their vaccines has nothing to do with the vaccine. If vaccines increased your likelihood of getting a serious health problem, then you'd be more likely to get a serious health problem after you're vaccinated than before. By contrapositive, "if you're not more likely to get a serious health problem after you're vaccinated than before, then vaccines do not increase your likelihood of getting a serious health problem".

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

   86%
4. D

   No Impact3% picked this

   The health problems that some people have developed shortly after receiving vaccinations have been more serious than the health problems that the

   This does nothing to help us solve the causal mystery of whether these serious health problems are a result of getting the vaccine, or whether they are problems that would have arisen anyway, and just happened to arrive shortly after someone got vaccinated, coincidentally.

   3%
5. E

   Weakens, if anything5% picked this

   In a few cases in which people developed serious health problems shortly after taking other medications, these problems were initially attributed to coincidence but

   Our author is attributing these serious health problems that developed shortly after taking other medication (a vaccine) to coincidence. This answer is saying, often when we initially attribute it to coincidence, we later find out it was really due to the medication. So this answer is giving off the innuendo that these "coincidental" health problems may turn out to really be from the vaccine. That's the opposite of what we're looking for.

   5%