Medical school professor: Most malpractice

Answer choices

1. A

   Too Strong: main14% picked this

   Economic incentives to treat patients rudely are the main cause of doctors being

   This tries to tie a connective bow around the whole paragraph. Be wary of this type of trap answer. Sometimes the correct answer does connect everything, but they're also testing us on whether we're prudent enough not to overreach. It's also no coincidence that this answer is positioned at (A). Economic incentives give doctors reason to treat patients rudely. The main cause of doctors being sued for malpractice is the patient perception that the doctor was negligent or careless. Is that the same thing as rude? No. So there's no way to draw a straight, strong line from economic incentives to doctors' being sued.

   14%
2. B

   Unsupported Relationship29% picked this

   The economic incentives in the health care system encourage doctors to regard medicine as a science rather

   This is doing a little Word Salad with some of the causal factors. Regarding medicine ? less compassionate as sci, not art economic incentives ? behave rudely We can't draw a causal relationship between economic incentives and regarding medicine as sci, not art.

   29%
3. C

   Out of Scope: unjustified3% picked this

   Malpractice suits brought against doctors are, for the most

   The author isn't offering any opinions or other ways we could derive the idea of "unjustified". If anything, the author is presenting evidence that doctors are acting kinda jerky around patients.

   3%
4. D

   Too Strong: should / entirely different4% picked this

   The scientific outlook in medicine should be replaced by an entirely different

   The author didn't state any opinions, so we'd be making a huge leap to there "should be an entirely different approach to medicine". We know the effect of the scientific outlook is "less compassionate", but maybe we have to balance that against the upsides of the scientific outlook, before we jump to saying "we should replace scientific outlook by something entirely different".

   4%
5. E

   Correct50% picked this

   Doctors foster, by their actions, the perception that they do not really care

   Why this is right

   We heard that doctors are often acting less compassionately with their patients, that they sometimes treat their patients rudely or discourage questions or sound patronizing, and that lawsuits could be avoided if doctors learned to listen better. Since we knew that most lawsuits arise from patients perceiving that their doctor is acting carelessly, it seems clear that many patients are perceiving that their doctors do not really care about their patients. There's no straight line way to derive this answer, but it is a reasonable takeaway from the paragraph. The troubling part to me is how to interpret the quantifier of "doctors". ALL doctors foster the perception that they don't really care? We can't support that. This answer is supportable if just meant "some doctors", but the answer uses a categorical "doctors", which typically implies we're speaking of all doctors. This is just one of those correct answers when you need to remind yourself that we're playing a game of "Best Available" answer, and so we can only keep rejecting this answer if we can argue that there's a better answer available.

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

   50%