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555-605 Level|   Assumption|         
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vikasp99
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Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level o 24 Feb 2017, 00:02
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72% (01:28) correct 28% (01:33) wrong based on 1592 sessions

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Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level of aluminum in their brain tissue. Since a silicon-based compound binds to aluminum and prevents it from affecting the brain tissue. Animals can be cured of the disorder by being treated with the compound.

The argument is based on which one of the following assumptions?

(A) Animals with the disorder have unusually high but invariable levels of aluminum in their brain tissue.
(B) Aluminum is the cause of the disorder rather than merely an effect of it.
(C) Introducing the compound into the brain tissue has no side effects.
(D) The amount of the compound needed to neutralize the aluminum in an animal's brain tissue varies depending upon the species.
(E) Aluminum is never present in normal brain tissue.
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B
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Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level o 24 Feb 2017, 19:09
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B is correct
Negating : if presence of aluminum in the brain was the effect of the disorder, then silicon-based compound would only treat the effect while the disorder would still be present --------> and conclusion would fall apart.
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Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level o 19 Mar 2017, 04:51
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Cause and effect type question.

A : aluminium level in brain
B : the disorder in brain
Option B shows that A leads to B not B leads to A.
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Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level o 14 May 2017, 09:48
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vikasp99
Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level of aluminum in their brain tissue. Since a silicon-based compound binds to aluminum and prevents it from affecting the brain tissue. Animals can be cured of the disorder by being treated with the compound.

The argument is based on which one of the following assumptions?

(A) Animals with the disorder have unusually high but invariable levels of aluminum in their brain tissue.
(B) Aluminum is the cause of the disorder rather than merely an effect of it.
(C) Introducing the compound into the brain tissue has no side effects.
(D) The amount of the compound needed to neutralize the aluminum in an animal's brain tissue varies depending upon the species.
(E) Aluminum is never present in normal brain tissue.
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An easy B
Aluminum is the cause of the disorder rather than merely an effect of it
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Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level o 22 May 2017, 15:27
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I never liked assumptions type of questions, but this one seems to be pretty easy.
I immediately thought about this question:
what if the increased aluminum level is the result of the disorder and not vice-versa?

B is the right assumption!
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Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level o 23 May 2017, 00:11
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Cause and effect type question.

A : aluminium level in brain
B : the disorder in brain
Option B shows that A leads to B not B leads to A.
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Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level o 15 Dec 2017, 01:10
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vikasp99
Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level of aluminum in their brain tissue. Since a silicon-based compound binds to aluminum and prevents it from affecting the brain tissue. Animals can be cured of the disorder by being treated with the compound.

The argument is based on which one of the following assumptions?

(A) Animals with the disorder have unusually high but invariable levels of aluminum in their brain tissue.
(B) Aluminum is the cause of the disorder rather than merely an effect of it.
(C) Introducing the compound into the brain tissue has no side effects.
(D) The amount of the compound needed to neutralize the aluminum in an animal's brain tissue varies depending upon the species.
(E) Aluminum is never present in normal brain tissue.
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There are so many logical flaws here! There are correlation/causation issues and cause/effect issues. Let's attack them! What is going on here?

We are given a fact: animals with a certain disorder have unusually high levels of aluminum in brain tissue. This is a correlation.

Then we are given another fact: this compound will prevent aluminum from affecting brain tissue. Now watch this subtle jump that the argument is implying here. How do we know that the aluminum affects the brain tissue at all? Maybe it doesn't!

Finally we get the conclusion: Animals can be cured of the disorder with this compound, presumably because the compound prevents aluminum from affecting brain tissue. Here is a cause and effect issue. We have no idea what causes this disorder! It could be that the weather causes this disorder and every animal who has this disorder just so happens to love eating aluminum foil. Who knows?! The main issue here though is that the argument is assuming that the aluminum is the cause and not merely the effect of the disorder.

(A) We don't need to assume that the animals have "invariable" levels of aluminum! Maybe the amount of aluminum changes only very slightly every day. Does that change the argument? Nope.

(C) "Side effects?" We don't care if it does/doesn't have side effects. Maybe it does! So what? Maybe it doesn't! So what? This, like (A), has no bearing on the argument.

(D) This is very similar to (C). This just has no bearing on the argument. Maybe we have to put more of this compound in a dog than a cat but that doesn't really speak to the gap between getting rid of the aluminum and getting rid of the disorder.

(E) This is the most tempting wrong answer. This is tempting because one may think, "well maybe if aluminum is never present then the aluminum is the cause of the disease!" However, this is wrong because of a few reasons: (1) it is simply not necessary! We are talking about "unusually high levels" of aluminum. Maybe everyone has a little bit of aluminum but not everyone has "unusually high" levels of it. (2) it seems to go against the premise. By saying that these animals have "unusually high" levels of aluminum seems to imply that animals have some level of aluminum, just not very "unusually high" levels.

(B) Bingo. Try to negate this and it will destroy the argument. This is the initial gap that I found and it helps to alleviate it beautifully.
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Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level o 31 Jan 2025, 08:43
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Pls help understand this one, if the conclusion is "animal can be cured of the disorder by being treated with the compound", then i guess an assumption is always what lead us to the conclusion. Through this it led me to C. Kindly, enlighten me.
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Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level o 31 Jan 2025, 09:24
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Bunuel bb GMATNinja ScottTargetTestPrep Sajjad1994 KarishmaB If i m correct, here conclusion is "Animals can be cured of the disorder by being treated with the compound", and assumption is basically it must be true, if it needs to work & which what leads to the conclusion. Through this, it led me to C. Pls enlighten me where i m going wrong.
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Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level o 01 Feb 2025, 19:23
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The problem with C is that the conclusion isn't about whether the treatment is perfect, safe, or advisable. It's just about whether it will treat the condition. Think about treatments people undergo, from dental fillings to medication to chemotherapy. Many of them have unwanted side effects--sometimes very unpleasant or dangerous ones!--but that doesn't mean they don't work. If the side effects are bad enough, you may decide to avoid the treatment, but that's still not the same as concluding that the treatment is ineffective. C doesn't tell us anything about whether the treatment will cure the disorder, so it has no effect on the argument.

B, however, addresses an underlying assumption. The premise provides a correlation between this disorder and high levels of aluminum in the brain. However, for the conclusion to make sense, we need to know that there is causation between the two factors--specifically, that the high aluminum levels cause the disorder. If one isn't causing the other, or if, as B says, the causation is the other way around, then it's unlikely that addressing the high aluminum levels would make a difference. It would be like trying to reverse biological aging by dyeing your grey hairs black--they were a result, not the cause!
Rikhraj1
Bunuel bb GMATNinja ScottTargetTestPrep Sajjad1994 KarishmaB If i m correct, here conclusion is "Animals can be cured of the disorder by being treated with the compound", and assumption is basically it must be true, if it needs to work & which what leads to the conclusion. Through this, it led me to C. Pls enlighten me where i m going wrong.
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Animals with a certain behavioral disorder have unusually high level o 03 Feb 2025, 16:16
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Rikhraj1
Bunuel bb GMATNinja ScottTargetTestPrep Sajjad1994 KarishmaB If i m correct, here conclusion is "Animals can be cured of the disorder by being treated with the compound", and assumption is basically it must be true, if it needs to work & which what leads to the conclusion. Through this, it led me to C. Pls enlighten me where i m going wrong.
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The little word "no" in choice (C) is critical: "Introducing the compound into the brain tissue has no side effects."

What if introducing the compound into the brain DOES have some side effects? What if it makes the animals a little sleepy or gives them nausea or some other digestive issue? That's fine, as long as the compound cures the disorder.

The argument does NOT claim that the compound will cure the disorder WITHOUT any side effects, so (C) doesn't matter.

(B), on the other hand, is a necessary assumption. If aluminum is actually just an effect of the disorder, then treating the aluminum will not necessarily treat the underlying disorder. The argument falls apart if that's the case, so (B) is the correct answer.

I hope that helps!
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