Asthma, a chronic breathing disorder, is significantly more common

Dear AbdurRakib,

I'm happy to respond. This is a brilliant and difficult question--the official questions are always so good!

From the prompt, we get
(a) competitive swimmers have asthma more frequently than do other competitive athletes
(b) chlorine is a lung irritant
The naive conclusion is that all the time in the chlorinated pools is what causes the asthma. The author warns us that this naive conclusion is rash, and the blank should provide some kind of alternative explanation of why competitive swimmers have asthma more frequently than do other competitive athletes.

A. young people who have asthma are no more likely to become competitive athletes than are young people who do not have asthma
Hmm. This is about those with and without asthma going into sports, but it tells us nothing about who goes in competitive swimming rather than other sports. This is irrelevant.

B. competitive athletes who specialize in sports other than swimming are rarely exposed to chlorine
We are looking for a new explanation, and this does the exact opposite: it strengthens the explanation that the author called "rash." This is incorrect.

C. competitive athletes as a group have a significantly lower incidence of asthma than do people who do not participate in competitive athletics
While this may be true, the argument is about comparing competitive swimmers vs. those who do other competitive athletes. Thus, this statement is irrelevant.

D. until a few years ago, physicians routinely recommended competitive swimming to children with asthma, in the belief that this form of exercise could alleviate asthma symptoms
Interesting. This would provide a completely different explanation of why so many people with asthma wound up in competitive swimming. It's not that being in the pool causes the asthma (the naive, rash conclusion); instead, the people who already had asthma were sent to the pool. This is promising.

E. many people have asthma without knowing they have it and thus are not diagnosed with the condition until they begin engaging in very strenuous activities, such as competitive
Again, the comparison in the prompt is between competitive swimmers vs. those who do other competitive athletes. If all the people with "latent asthma" develop full-blown asthma when they start doing strenuous athletic activity, why would it show up only for swimmers and not for all other kinds of athletes. It's not as if swimming is the only kind of strenuous activity out there. This is irrelevant.

The only possible answer is (D), the OA.

Does this make sense?
Mike
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Asthma, a chronic breathing disorder, is significantly more common today among adult competitive swimmers than it is among competitive athletes who specialize in other sports. Although chlorine is now known to be a lung irritant and swimming pool water is generally chlorinated, it would be rash to assume that frequent exposure to chlorine is the explanation of the high incidence of asthma among these swimmers, since __________.

A. young people who have asthma are no more likely to become competitive athletes than are young people who do not have asthma
B. competitive athletes who specialize in sports other than swimming are rarely exposed to chlorine
C. competitive athletes as a group have a significantly lower incidence of asthma than do people who do not participate in competitive athletics
D. until a few years ago, physicians routinely recommended competitive swimming to children with asthma, in the belief that this form of exercise could alleviate asthma symptoms
E. many people have asthma without knowing they have it and thus are not diagnosed with the condition until they begin engaging in very strenuous activities, such as competitive athletics

The statement specifically puts across the word 'today' and notice that adult competitive swimmers are compared with competitive athletes.
GMAT does leave clues for us to track down the solution

Here why D is correct because Doctors prescribed competitive swimming as a cure for asthma. So doctors thought that competitive swimming should be used as a cure of Asthma. From the argument what we see is that people who are competitive swimmers are having chronic breathing disorder. So there must be some other reason which is causing ill effect on competitive swimming and that is chlorine.

"although" is a key word showing the contrasting the relation, but only "however" often determines that the question is an explanation question. Possibly, there are explanation questions containing contrasting words other than "however".

Imo D
From D we can say that no of people suffering from Asthma are more likely to take up swimming because of doctor's recommendation.
This gives us alternate reason why people in competitive swimming suffer from asthma.

Hi..
By using POE, I chose option D.
But, option D talks about the children whereas the question mentions about competitive adult swimmers??

Is there one more assumption lying behind the logic in this option?

"until few years ago" -This part in option D tells us that these recommendation were made few years ago and thus , these children are now adult swimmers. Hope it helps.

Conclusion is that chlorine is not the cause of asthma. How recommending by physicians to swimm can strengthen it?

Let me try with this.

Conclusion : chlorine is not the cause of asthma in adult swimmers.
Now we have to give the reason that will strengthen this conclusion further.

Option D: It says that physicians few years ago recommended that children suffering from asthma go for swimming.This tells us that the greater number of adults suffering from asthma are not because of chlorine but bacuse they are doing swimming from childhood as suggested by physicians.in nut shell it says that asthma patients are more into swimming to allievate astma effects .

Hope it helps.

I'm gonna add my 2 cents

The assumption that swimming nurtures asthma commits a common fallacy - observe 2 events A and B happening simultaneously, then conclude that A leads to B. One of the ways to weakening the argument is to point out B leads to A instead.

In the question, fallacious assumption is that swimming makes athletes more vulnerable to asthma.
--> Weakener: In fact, those players got asthma first, then chose swimming as a treatment

(D) is correct.

We are looking for a statement that if true would negate the argument that exposure to swimming pool water is the reason swimmers have higher incidence of asthma than other athletes. Well, this argument is a classic correlation-causation error. If we can point out that the correlation does not imply causation in this case, e.g., by showing that something else causes the correlation, we will weaken that argument. Answer choice D explains why swimmers have relatively high incidence of asthma - asthmatic children tended to train to become swimmers because their doctors advised them to.
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Beatiful question! It's definitely worth 1000-1500 bucks or whatever the great amount of money GMAC spends per question:)

sir i want to ask that the case is of people : adult competitive swimmers. but there is no surety the children sent to pool will become adult competitive swimmer they can go for few months and leave as part of medial procedure .i got D by POE but have doubts

Dear oishik2910,

I'm happy to respond.

With all due respect, I don't understand what you are asking here. I am going to ask you to rephrase your question more clearly. Please be very careful about spelling mistakes (e.g. "medial" ==> "medical") that can make what you say harder to understand. Also, you are using the word "surety" in a somewhat infrequently used sense, which adds further to making this difficult to understand. Please be more careful phrasing your question. Thank you.

Mike
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mike
sir

the reason we have picked choice D because it shows that why so many people with asthma wound up in competitive swimming. It's not that being in the pool causes the asthma (the naive, rash conclusion); instead, the people who already had asthma were sent to the pool
but my doubt is
children are sent to swimming pool as a part of medical procedure but they may or may not become competitive swimmer : for instance
50 children were sent to swimming for 3 months to bring their asthma out but none of them became a competitive swimmer

Dear oishik2910,

Thank you for clarifying. I am happy to respond.

Think about how this plays out.

First of all, asthma is a chronic condition: it has treatments but no known cure. That is real world knowledge you need to know. Therefore, the children would not have been sent to the pool for 3 months only: they would have been in the pool for much of the time they were growing up, if the parents really thought this would help their chronic condition.

Next, of course the doctor would have told the parents: the pool will help your child's asthma. Would the children have known this? Or in the child's view, would these trips to the pool have been just for fun? Of course, to some extent, it would depend on the child's age at the onset of asthma: younger children might be less aware of the true purpose and more likely to understand the trip solely in terms of their experience of fun.

Keep in mind, too, that by and large, children love to swim and play in a pool. In some parts of the US, pool parties are a common birthday party time, especially during warm months in hot areas. Kids love pools. Even children who are initial timid or who don't know how to swim, once they have been trained and acclimated often have a blast. In my estimation, it's a minority of children who actively do not like to be in the pool. The many incentives of going to the pool multiply as children reach teenager years, but we will leave that aside. All this is to say that what started as trips to the pool for medical reasons may quickly involve into something the child wants to do, a vital part of her play and her social life.

So, we have a large population of children, going to the pool frequently during their entire childhood, and most likely enjoying it. Of course, not all of them will become competitive swimmers, but this sounds like a plausible backstory for anyone who does become a competitive swimmer. We certainly would not expect a competitive swimmer to say, "I never was in the pool much as a child."

All the argument is suggesting is that people who spend most of their childhood going to the pool are more likely to become competitive swimmers than folks who didn't go to the pool much as children.

Does all this make sense?
Mike
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Option D gives information about Children.. how that can be right answer? If that option talked about all athletes, then only it could be correct..

I rejected this option with this reasoning.

Sent from my XT1562 using GMAT Club Forum mobile app

Even though I understand the logic behind D, I think that E can also fill in the gap.
Thus, I feel confused btw D & E.
Below is my reasoning for E; I'd appreciate experts' comments/opinions on my reasoning.

E. many people have asthma without knowing they have it and thus are not diagnosed with the condition until they begin engaging in very strenuous activities, such as competitive athletics
So many people WITH asthma participate in competitive athletics, including SWIMMING. So many competitive swimmers may have asthma BEFORE they engage in competitive activities, so there’s reason to doubt the conclusion that “frequent exposure to chlorine is the explanation of (CAUSES) the high incidence of asthma among these swimmers”.
The problem with this option is that it says many people WITH asthma participate in competitive athletics, including SWIMMING. It doesn’t provide more info on how many of such people participate in swimming, how many participate in other sports. So we don’t understand why “Asthma, a chronic breathing disorder, is significantly more common today among adult competitive swimmers than it is among competitive athletes who specialize in other sports”. And maybe because of this reason, this option is rejected.
But the point with this question is that we just need to find a reason to doubt the conclusion that “frequent exposure to chlorine is the explanation of the high incidence of asthma among these swimmers”. We don’t have to persuasively prove that conclusion to be wrong; we just need to find reasons to doubt it. So even though we don’t know the proportions of people with ASTHMA participating in swimming and other sports, we know that many WITH ASTHMA may participate in sports, including swimming, so chlorine may not cause asthma for those people – they already have it before they start their sport. Why asthma is “significantly more common today among adult competitive swimmers than it is among competitive athletes who specialize in other sports”, we don’t know from this option; it may be because of some other reasons. But we don’t have to point out the reason; all we need is to find a reason to support the author’s conclusion that “it would be rash to assume that frequent exposure to chlorine is the explanation of the high incidence of asthma among these swimmers”, and this options does support the author’s conclusion by breaking the causal cycle of “exposure to chlorine --> asthma” and suggesting that the incidence is because of some other reasons.
Some people may find that this support is “weak”, but typical GMAT CR strengthening/weakening questions don’t demand that the evidence persuasively breaks/makes the conclusion; the correct answer only needs to provide a reason to cast doubt on the conclusion.

Asthma, a chronic breathing disorder, is significantly more common today among adult competitive swimmers than it is among competitive athletes who specialize in other sports. Although chlorine is now known to be a lung irritant and swimming pool water is generally chlorinated, it would be rash to assume that frequent exposure to chlorine is the explanation of the high incidence of asthma among these swimmers, since __________.


Generic view is presented - Today adults who involves in swimming have greater probability of having asthma.
Fact : Chlorine in swimming pool water is now known to be a lung irritant .

Inferred conclusion - Since chlorine is a lung irritant - it can cause asthma

Author's conclusion - Author does not believe that - swimming( with chlorinated water) is causing asthma

We need a supporting statement which cement the author's conclusion

Cause -> Effect
To disprove the direction of causation and effect - below are few logics
- Above two events can be co-related.
- Effect is the actual cause in the above equation.
- Presence of Effect even cause is not there.

In option D - we have been given : Asthma happened first as a cause ( cited as Effect in above relation ) to start swimming in chlorinated water as an effect ( cited as cause)