CR: Of patients over 65 years old who survived coronary bypa

[debopam.basu]

Hello, sorry for bumping this question but I had a doubt.

The patients who underwent coronary bypass surgery but who did not benefit from it were medically indistinguishable, prior to their surgery, from the patients who did benefit. --> Does this not strengthen the argument? If the patients were indistinguishable prior to their surgery, does that not put them on the same ground? My reasoning was this - The patients were in the same state or on equal footing before the surgery. Therefore there is no reason to question the argument.

Usually in a strengthening question, an unstated assumption acts as the possible strengthener - it shows that the groups in consideration had the same characteristics initially.

Of course, when I read the explanation I agreed to that. But my question is - is not the statement ambiguous? Does not everything depend on the way we interpret the argument?

I hope I could put my point across clearly. Can you please advise what I should do in such situations? Where have I gone wrong?

[jnelson0612]

Hello, sorry for bumping this question but I had a doubt.

The patients who underwent coronary bypass surgery but who did not benefit from it were medically indistinguishable, prior to their surgery, from the patients who did benefit. --> Does this not strengthen the argument? If the patients were indistinguishable prior to their surgery, does that not put them on the same ground? My reasoning was this - The patients were in the same state or on equal footing before the surgery. Therefore there is no reason to question the argument.

Usually in a strengthening question, an unstated assumption acts as the possible strengthener - it shows that the groups in consideration had the same characteristics initially.

Of course, when I read the explanation I agreed to that. But my question is - is not the statement ambiguous? Does not everything depend on the way we interpret the argument?

I hope I could put my point across clearly. Can you please advise what I should do in such situations? Where have I gone wrong?

Hi,
I need more information to be able to help you. How is the statement ambiguous?

[gmatkiller_24]

I would ask why not C? Actually C provides an alternate reasoning for more number of patients undergoing the operation with less success rate. I thought alternate reasoning has higher prio in weaken questions.

I don't know but more often than not I am getting into this funny situation that I have two answers with me and I almost always select the wrong one. This has become real serious problem.

Any Golden thumb rule for CR when you two answer choices please?

Thanks

C doesn't directly weaken the conclusion that for one-fourth of patients doctors were more interested in practicing their skills and collecting fees than in helping patients.

Look at the premise: 75% of people over 65 who undergo the procedure are helped and 25% are not. From that we are concluding that for 25% of patients doctors are doing the surgery only to gain experience and collect fees.

The best way to weaken an argument is to attack the assumption. There is a huge logic gap between saying that 25% of the patients were not helped by the surgery, thus the doctors performing the surgery on these people only did it to benefit themselves, the doctors. To conclude this we have to assume that the doctors KNEW the surgery would not benefit the patients but did it anyway to gain experience and fees. To weaken the argument, negate this assumption.

If you can deconstruct the argument this way you are much more likely to find the right answer.

From my perspective, it seems to me that C is irrelevant, or at most, strengthen the argument a little bit, because patients are being advised by doctors. ( if it is not so evil to think that doctor can advise patients to do the surgery to obtain the money)

is is a valid thinking?

[RonPurewal]

from the passage it's already known that the patients are being advised by doctors.
choice C just gives some details about the particulars of that advice-- but those particulars don't matter. the only things that matter are (a) that patients are having surgery on their doctors' recommendations, and (b) that some of them don't benefit from the surgery.

[RonPurewal]

as always, if you personalize this argument, you'll be able to cut to the core of the problem pretty quickly.

this passage is, essentially, an accusation against doctors. so, YOU are a doctor who decides whether to recommend for or against surgery for your patients.

here's what the passage is saying, basically, to YOU:
- you advised some patients to have surgery.
- there were some for whom the surgery didn't help. (i.e., the surgery didn't help ONE HUNDRED PER CENT of the patients.)
- so, you must have been just using those patients for YOUR personal gain.

!!!

if you're the doctor here, it's easy to see that this is an absolutely ridiculous argument.
after all, it's only common sense that, sometimes, surgery doesn't help!
as the doctor, you'll immediately realize what's going on: you advise ALL patients with certain symptoms to have the surgery (and you advise all other patients NOT to have it).
it's impossible to tell beforehand which patients will be the unlucky ones, since you're making all the recommendations on the basis of the same criteria.

[RonPurewal]

... and it's not just this argument that is spectacularly horrible.

MOST gmat arguments are, in real-world terms, horrible. if you can "make them come alive" and imagine them in real-world terms-- as though you were personally involved-- you'll see this, time and time again. the issues in GMAT arguments are big issues; they are not "nitpicky" at all.

that's not the challenge. the challenge is that, if you view the argument from a detached perspective, as though it were just "academic text on a screen", you simply won't have any intuition about what matters and what doesn't.