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Drug company manager: Our newest product is just not selling. One way 09 Apr 2025, 03:09
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Thanks DmitryFarber for the detailed explanation. However, I have a doubt here which still remains uncleared. The argument clearly says that the new product is the focus for drug company manager but option D talks about the company as a whole. Is option D the correct answer mainly because of the reason that once the company's overall position is endangered then that product (for which the new marketing campaign is going to get launched) will also be under danger so ultimately new campaign won't be of a great help, hence, weakens our confidence in the author's conclusion "we should try it" ?

I mainly rejected option D by thinking "whole company" as a bigger scope than the new product which is the only scope for the argument.

Please help me clear this doubt.

DmitryFarber
HAPPYatHARVARD Be careful with that rule about extremes. It makes sense for Inference, but not for Strengthen/Weaken. If I am trying to weaken an argument, an extreme statement can be EXTREMELY helpful. However, noticing SHOULD is important. The appearance of that word in the conclusion is the key to this question.

The author states that a particular action may be helpful, and therefore concludes that the company SHOULD take that action. This relies on an assumption that there is no reason NOT to take that action. Any answer that gives us a compelling reason not to run a new marketing campaign for the product will be a winner. We don't need to definitively prove that the campaign will be bad--we just need to weaken the idea that it will be good.

C is understandably tempting, but it is a conditional with an unfulfilled condition. In other words, it says "If no chance, then don't do it." But we don't know there's no chance, so C has zero effect on the argument.

B doesn't add to our understanding, either. We already know that the product may fail with or without the campaign, so B doesn't change anything. (As for the word "many," we can interpret it the same way as "some": basically, more than zero and that's it! There's no clear threshold for what "many" means. It's very dependent on context and interpretation.)

D introduces a clear drawback to undertaking the campaign. This is the kind of new information we were looking for! Note that it doesn't PROVE the argument wrong. Maybe the campaign would be a smashing success, but it introduces a big risk for the whole company, and that's a pretty compelling reason to go against the author's conclusion. sony1000, we have a pretty wide-open mission here, because the conclusion just said "We should do this." If the conclusion had been more narrowly focused on a specific effect (e.g. "The campaign will increase awareness of this product by 20%"), then information about the overall effect on the company would be out of scope.
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Drug company manager: Our newest product is just not selling. One way 12 Apr 2025, 18:35
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Actually, we have no information about what the "focus" is for the company or the manager. The argument simply presents as a premise that the campaign would be one way to save the product. It then concludes that this campaign should be used. As soon as we jump to a SHOULD statement, then literally any reason not to take that action can serve as a weaken. The right answer could have mentioned a financial reason, a moral concern, an environmental impact, a command from the heavens, literally anything at all. We just don't know what the company should or shouldn't do, so any new piece of information is useful as guidance.

If the conclusion had been that undertaking the campaign would be helpful for the product, then information about other issues would only be useful if it directly impacted the success of the product (and no, we couldn't assume that negative financials would doom the product). However, since the conclusion is about what should be done, then we are open to a far broader range of ideas.
agrasan
Thanks DmitryFarber for the detailed explanation. However, I have a doubt here which still remains uncleared. The argument clearly says that the new product is the focus for drug company manager but option D talks about the company as a whole. Is option D the correct answer mainly because of the reason that once the company's overall position is endangered then that product (for which the new marketing campaign is going to get launched) will also be under danger so ultimately new campaign won't be of a great help, hence, weakens our confidence in the author's conclusion "we should try it" ?

I mainly rejected option D by thinking "whole company" as a bigger scope than the new product which is the only scope for the argument.

Please help me clear this doubt.

DmitryFarber
HAPPYatHARVARD Be careful with that rule about extremes. It makes sense for Inference, but not for Strengthen/Weaken. If I am trying to weaken an argument, an extreme statement can be EXTREMELY helpful. However, noticing SHOULD is important. The appearance of that word in the conclusion is the key to this question.

The author states that a particular action may be helpful, and therefore concludes that the company SHOULD take that action. This relies on an assumption that there is no reason NOT to take that action. Any answer that gives us a compelling reason not to run a new marketing campaign for the product will be a winner. We don't need to definitively prove that the campaign will be bad--we just need to weaken the idea that it will be good.

C is understandably tempting, but it is a conditional with an unfulfilled condition. In other words, it says "If no chance, then don't do it." But we don't know there's no chance, so C has zero effect on the argument.

B doesn't add to our understanding, either. We already know that the product may fail with or without the campaign, so B doesn't change anything. (As for the word "many," we can interpret it the same way as "some": basically, more than zero and that's it! There's no clear threshold for what "many" means. It's very dependent on context and interpretation.)

D introduces a clear drawback to undertaking the campaign. This is the kind of new information we were looking for! Note that it doesn't PROVE the argument wrong. Maybe the campaign would be a smashing success, but it introduces a big risk for the whole company, and that's a pretty compelling reason to go against the author's conclusion. sony1000, we have a pretty wide-open mission here, because the conclusion just said "We should do this." If the conclusion had been more narrowly focused on a specific effect (e.g. "The campaign will increase awareness of this product by 20%"), then information about the overall effect on the company would be out of scope.
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