A researcher discovered that people who have low levels of immune-system activity tend to score much lower on tests of mental health than do people with normal or high immune-system activity. The researcher concluded from this experiment that the immune system protects against mental illness as well as against physical disease.
OG The researcher's conclusion would be most seriously weakened if it were true that
(A) there was a one-year delay between the completion of a pilot study for the experiment and the initiation of the experiment itself
Irrelevant.
(B) people's levels of immune-system activity are not affected by their use of medications
This strengthens the argument. If we can rule out medications as a factor that causes low levels of immune activity and hence causes people to perform poorly on mental health tests, then we can be more confident in the conclusion. Thus, we can be more assured that those test results are valid.
(C) a few people with high immune-system activity had scores on the test of mental health that were similar to the scores of people who had normal immune system activity
No. A relevant comparison (that would serve to weaken the conclusion) is that people with high immune system activity had comparable scores to those with low immunity. The comparison is between low vs normal/high.
(D) people who have low immune-system activity tend to contract more viral infections than do people with normal or high immune-system activity
OK – this is certainly true, but this choice does not weaken the key link between the premise and conclusion. The premise is that low immunity leads to lower scores on mental health (compared with those with normal or high immunity). From this, the author concludes that the low immunity is protective against diseases.
(E)high levels of stress first cause mental illness and then cause decreased immune-system activity in normal individuals
Correct! We have here the presence of a third factor which shows that the current causal chain is wrong. It’s not that people have low immunity and then score poorly on mental health tests and ultimately as a result of their poor immunity go on to be more susceptible to physical and mental health abnormalities. Rather, the mental health issues were caused by stress and that led to impaired immunity.