Logical Reasoning

PT3 · S4 · Q22 The United States Food and Drug Administration

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The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates the introduction of new therapeutic agents into the marketplace.

Facts

causal (consequently)

FDA regulates intro >> big role in improving of new therapies health care

conditional (only)

help patients → drug transferred from lab to mkt

FDA is responsible for getting drug transferred from lab to mkt.

Evaluate

On Must Be True, we primarily read for Conditional ideas, and secondarily for Causality / Pivots / Math.

The last sentence is a conditional and has an overlapping concept with the previous sentence: transfer of new discoveries from lab to market.

Until the FDA makes that transfer, the new therapeutic agent can't help patients.

Goal

It's hard to make a prediction here, but our spidey-sense would guess that they want to use that conditional about "transfers" and connect it somehow to the fact that the FDA is the one responsible for the transfer.

22.

Which one of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?

  1. The FDA is responsible for

    Contradicted (then)

    The passage makes it seem like the regulation comes first, and that allows passage into the marketplace, at which point it would be marketed. This answer makes it seem like marketing comes first and then regulation comes second. The regulation introduces the drug into the marketplace, so it has to come first.

    7% picked this

  2. Correct

    Before new therapeutic agents reach

    Why this is right

    This is essentially just giving us the contrapositive of the final sentence: "Until the drug has been transferred from the lab to the marketplace, it can't help patients".

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

    71% picked this

  3. The research community is responsible

    Out of Scope (excessively)

    We know that those in academic / govt research communities play a role and that the FDA plays a role in bringing a new drug from nonexistence to the market. We know it takes the research community a long time with its part of the process, but might also take the FDA a long time with its part. And we never heard that the process overall is excessively long. It could be justifiably long.

    9% picked this

  4. The FDA should work more

    Out of Scope: should

    The facts presented were all descriptive. We can't derive a must be true normative idea from descriptive claims. This answer implies that there's currently a problem with how closely the FDA works with researchers, but we didn't hear anything that implies that anything is currently problematic.

    2% picked this

  5. If a new medical discovery

    Reversal / Negation

    The final sentence says "if it hasn't transferred from lab to market, it won't help" and this is an illegal negation saying "If it has transferred, it will help"

    10% picked this

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