A certain drug, when taken by patients with high blood pressure, was

received a pm.

Hi nusmavrik,

Here: cr-drug-vs-exercise-96375.html is the same question. There are two differences. First, this question's choice A is actually choice D in the other question.

Second, here, choice A uses the word "no" while the other one uses the word "few". This is an important difference. In fact, the author's reasoning does not depend on the idea that none of the high-blood pressure patients exercise regularly. The denial of "none" is "at least one". Does this argument fall apart if, say, just one patient in the high-blood pressure group exercises regularly? Nope. And choice D of this question is definitely incorrect (I explained why in the other post).

Thus, my analysis is that there is nothing among the five answer choices that this author's reasoning depends on, and this is a bad question for that reason. If you have questions about why a certain answer choice is wrong, please don't hesitate to post!

The author says that exercise is better to lower blood pressure than the drug.

B: Out of scope
C: Out of scope
E: Out of scope - If it would be an assumption, wouldn't help the author.

So we're down to A & D, which are pretty close. So let's take a look at D:

If the patients all react the same on exercise, the assumption of the author would be true. But if the exercise would increase the blood pressure of some patients, the assumption would not be true. Hence, D is the right choice.

Maybe I'm wrong or I'm weird but for some time whenever I try to solve a question other than OG Im uncomfortable. Perhaps is because are not well written.......who knows

Anyway. Aside my personal opinion the answer should be D

The focus of the question is that regular or daily excercise (notice at least >5) and considering the survey ALL patient should show that excercise is good for all. Otherwise the conclusion could not be true for all

Weird question.

regards

Conclusion : for HIGH BP patients ..............Exercise better than medicine
Premise 1 : for HIGH BP patients ........... medicine results
Premise 2 :NORMAL BP patients......... Exercise results

Premise missing : HIGH BP patients ........... Exercise results

Statement D: HIGH BP patients ........... Exercise results = NORMAL BP patients......... Exercise results
Therefore statement D gives the missing premise


For statement A
Not sure: If statement
" However, a survey of patients with normal blood pressure found that almost 80 percent exercised at least 5 days per week for 30 minutes and maintained a normal blood pressure "
means for 80%-exercise caused normal BP to sustain
if yes then according to reverse analogy:
No normal BP means 80% have not exercised

Statement D: HIGH BP patients ........... Exercise results = LOW BP patients......... Exercise results
No normal BP for High BP patients means 80% HIGH BP have not exercised

Statement A is already covered by the Statement D itself

For statement B,C & E
No link to connect premise 1 to premise 2

Therefore D.

Please tell the source

premise- A certain drug, when taken by patients with high blood pressure, was found to lower blood pressure to high-normal levels, or from an average of 30 percent to an average of 10 percent above normal.
premise- A survey of patients with normal blood pressure found that almost 80 percent exercised at least 5 days per week for 30 minutes and maintained a normal blood pressure(BP).

Conclusion- Therefore, the drug is not as effective in reducing blood pressure in patients with high blood pressure as is exercise.

The validity of the above conclusion depends on the truth of which of the following?
A) None of the patients with high blood pressure exercise regularly.....[color=#00a651]appears correct....since none of the patients exercised regularly ..the reduction of BP cannot be attributed to exercise in their case and the results are pure...IF they were exercising also, yet their BP comes upto 10% above normal levels...and not normal BP levels....the conclusion that Exercising is a better option will fall flat........[/color]
B) No patient with high blood pressure successfully achieved below-normal levels with the drug alone..this is just a modification to counter premise..
C) Patients with normal blood-pressure maintained healthy diets for the duration of the study....irrelevant information.
D) Daily exercise has the same effect on blood pressure in all patients....that really does'nt matter...in any case only 80% showed positive results....
E) The drug has little or no effect on patients with normal blood pressures.....the conclusion talks about effectiveness of drug on high BP....SO this is irrelevant....
IMO "A"

Conclusion: Drug is less effective than exercise in patients with high blood pressure.

Direct Approach: Target the comparison of drug effectiveness and exercise effectiveness mentioned in the conclusion.
Defender Approach: Negate the ones with negative language and the ones arousing any doubt while elimination.

D need not be correct as conclusion specifically focuses on patients with high blood pressure. Moreover, negating this option(Daily exercise has different effect on bp in all patients) doesn't prove that "Drugs will be not be less effective than Exercise". So, this comparison is not targeted in the choice.

C(Having healthy diets) will be applicable to samples of both drugs-taking and exercise-doing people, so we can not specifically prove our conclusion.

E is out as the normal blood pressure people are not discussed in the argument.

Since A/B have a negative language, so negation test is easy to apply.

Negated B says that All Patients with high bp achieved achieved below-normal levels with drug alone. But, again, the comparison as in conclusion is not taken addressed. It is possible that exercise doing people might be achieving better below-normal levels and thus better results.

Negated A says that "All patients with high bp exercise regularly". Conclusion says that exercise is better than drugs for high bp. Author is making assumption from a study of 2 independent group of patients. One group sample taking drugs and other doing exercise. If author is saying that drug taking group sample is not doing better than exercise, then he doesn't assume that these two groups are inter-mixed. But, negated A assumes that even the drug taking patients(as they have high bp) are also doing exercise. This disturbs the assumption.
Other way (with negated A) to see at A is that if drug taking patients are also doing exercise, then exercise should help in improving bp again. So chances of improvement will drug taking patients could be better and thus disturb the conclusion again.

OA is A.
Source 800Score

HTH

Hi

For some unknown reason i feel in a same way too as Carcass does. Moreover in this question i am sure D is the correct option not A. I would also request aspirant or test takers t avoid sources such as Baron, 800 score, & LSAT question. Even if you put such a question on the forum kindly specify the source so that users can choose not to solve any unwanted quesstions.

Regards

Drug usage on HBP = Lowers BP
Contrast : 80% of Normal BP exercised daily
Conclusion : Drug is not as effective in reducing BP as exercise.

The argument shifts from HBP to Normal BP and the draws a generalized conclusion based on survey on Normal BP, so option (D) must be our answer....

There is no mention of people with High BP trying to excercise in the passage. I don't know why people are harping around A.
The question is plain and straight and so is the answer.
The question is which of the following assumptions will support the whole passage.
For this we need to look into the conclusion which is marked by the cue words "therefore , as a result, hence..."
The conclusion talks about the drug being not as effective as the excercise, which leaves us with only one choice that assumes the effect of excercise is the same as that of the drug.

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