Logical Reasoning

PT140 · S2 · Q4 Physician: Stories of people developing

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Physician: Stories of people developing serious health problems shortly after receiving vaccinations have given rise to the question of whether vaccination is safe.

Conclusion

Even if the stories of health problems shortly after vaccinations are true, they're no need for concern.

Evidence

With millions of vaccinations, you're bound to have some coincidental cases where people got their vaccine, happened to develop some serious health problem right after by coincidence, and then blamed the health problem on the vaccine.

Evaluate

This author wants to explain away the stories of people getting vaxxed and then experiencing health problems right after as mere coincidence.

Someone attacking this argument would say,

Goal

In order to strengthen the idea that these health problems occurring after the vaccinations are just random coincidences, not side effects of the vaccine, it would help the author to show us that there's too much variety in terms of when people feel "side effects" and what side effects they feel for these to truly be symptoms of the vaccine's aftermath.

Let's look for an answer like that or any other answer that increases the plausibility that people are blaming a health problem on a vaccine just because the health problem developed coincidentally after they got vaccinated.

Which one of the following, if true, would most strengthen the physician's argument?

For the most part, stories
Weakens, if anything
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% picked this
Some of the illnesses that
No Impact
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% picked this
Correct
People are no more likely,
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% picked this
The health problems that some
No Impact
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% picked this
In a few cases in
Weakens, if anything
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% picked this

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