It is illegal to advertise prescription medications in Hedland except

E. Whether physicians would give in to a patient's demands for a prescription medication chosen by the patient when the one originally prescribed by the physician fails to perform as desired.

If the physicians would give in to a patient's demands for a prescription medication chosen by the patient when the one originally prescribed by the physician fails to perform as desired. => the prescription advertisement will become commonly. If not, the advertisement become ineffective.

Question Source : Critical Reasoning from GMAT Prep

It is illegal to advertise prescription medications in Hedland except directly to physicians, either by mail or in medical journals. A proposed law would allow general advertising of prescription medications. Opponents object that the general population lacks the specialized knowledge to evaluate such advertisements and might ask their physicians for inappropriate medications. But since physicians have the final say as to whether to prescribe a medication for a patient, inappropriate prescriptions would not become more common.

Which of the following would it be most useful to establish in order to evaluate the argument?


A. Whether advertising for prescription medications might alert patients to the existence of effective treatments for minor ailments that they had previously thought to be untreatable

B. Whether some people might go to a physician for no reason other than ask for a particular medication they have seen advertised

C. Whether the proposed law requires prescription-medication advertisements directed to the general public to provide the same information as do advertisements directed to physicians.

D. Whether advertisements for prescription medications are currently an important source of information about newly available medications for physicians

E. Whether physicians would give in to patients’ demands for prescription medication they chose when the one originally prescribed by the physician fails to perform.


Can someone explain what should be the logic to solve this kind of questions?
I have serious problems with the evaluate type of questions.

OA would follow soon..

Evaluate question like these are another form of Argument question. Just like Assumption, Strengthen, Weaken, and Flaw questions, your first step is to find the assumption of the argument, the gap between the evidence and conclusion.

In this case, the author's evidence is that doctors have "the final say," and as a result that author concludes patients knowing about medicines will cause poor medical decisions. But we're changing subjects here! The evidence is about who makes the decision, while the conclusion is about HOW the decision turns out. There are many factors that influence the doctor's final decision--including the patient's requests.

Therefore, the assumption is that patients knowing about drugs won't cause doctors, who do have the final say, to make poor choices. And this is an Evaluation question. So we look for the answer choice that lets us evaluate that assumption--we need to ask whether or not patient knowledge can influence medical judgement. And indeed, (E) is exactly the right question, and the correct answer.

Good luck, and I hope this helps!

@VeritasPrepKarishma -


Does that mean that we can apply a sort of Yes/No test.
the correct option would strengthen or weaken the conclusion in either of the yes/no evaluation questions..

say for example -

If physicians will give in to patients’ demands, inappropriate prescriptions will become more common. - Yes. This weakens the conclusion
If physicians will not give in to patients’ demands, inappropriate prescriptions will not become more common - No. This supports the conclusion.

I guess, if we apply this Yes/No test to all the answer options, we can eliminate the irrelevant ones..
Your comments please..

You can call it whatever you want. You want to find the option that helps you evaluate the conclusion. So the answer to the question in the option should have the ability to affect the strength of the conclusion - either make it stronger or weaker. Note that it is not necessary that both 'yes' and 'no' will affect the conclusion but at least one of them should.

Say, we go back to our previous example:

A says, "It is a good idea to invest in company A right now."

You want to evaluate this argument. What information will be useful in evaluating this statement?
"Was the senior management turnover high in the last 2 yrs?"

Yes - It affects our argument. It may not be a good idea to invest in A.
No - Doesn't affect our argument. You expect the turnover to be low. If it is as expected, it doesn't make our argument stronger. Just that our argument doesn't become weaker.

The argument says, boiling it down: "the ads might convince the patients, but they won't convince the doctors." From that, the argument concludes that doctors won't give out bad prescriptions because of the ads. E suggests the possibility that the patients might convince the doctors to make bad prescriptions, which is why it is an important question to evaluate in the context of the argument.

None of the other answer choices suggest reasons why doctors might issue bad prescriptions against their best judgment.

The argument is evaluating whether inappropriate prescriptions would become more common.

(A) Whether advertising for prescription medications might alert patients to the existence of effective treatments for minor ailments that they had previously thought to be untreatable (The consumers awareness will not affect the physicians prescriptions, eliminate)
(B) Whether some people might go to a physician for no reason other than to ask for a particular medication they have seen advertised (Close, the physician might succumb to their patients will, not a very strong point but let us keep it for sometime)
(C) Whether the proposed law requires prescription-medication advertisements directed to the general public to provide the same information as do advertisements directed to physicians (Even if it is, it will not make any difference to the approach of physicians prescription, eliminate)
(D) Whether advertisements for prescription medications are currently an important source of information about newly available medications for physicians (Not relevant, eliminate)
(E) Whether physicians would give in to a patient's demand for a prescription medication chosen by the patient when the one originally prescribed by the physician fails to perform as desired (This is our answer, it states very clearly that the patient might force the physicians to make inappropriate prescriptions, stronger than B)

Hope this helps !

Here's an evaluate question.
Conclusion: Bust since physicians have the final say as to whether to prescribe a medication for a patient, inappropriate prescriptions would not become more common.

A. Whether advertising for prescription medications might alert patients to the existence of effective treatments for minor ailments that they had previously thought to be untreatable
Effective treatments are never inappropriate, none-whatsoever.

B. Whether some people might go to a physcian for no reason other than ask for a particular medication they have seen advertised Physicians have the final say, so nothing can be determined here.

C. Whether the proposed law requires prescription-medication advertisements directed to the general public to provide the same information as do advertisements directed to physicians. Physicians have the final say, so nothing can be determined here too.

D. Whether advertisements for prescription medications are currently an important source of information about newly available medications for physicians Whether advertisements are an important source of information does not establish that inappropriate prescriptions would not become more common.

E. Whether physicians would give in to a patient's demands for a prescription medication chosen by the patient when the one originally prescribed by the physician fails to perform as desired. If the physician gave into a patient's demands, then inappropriate prescriptions would become more common; if the physician were not to give into a patient's demands, then inappropriate prescriptions would not become more common.

It is illegal to advertise prescription medications in Hedland except directly to physicians, either by mail or in medical journals. A proposed law would allow general advertising of prescription medications. Opponents object that the general population lacks the specialized knowledge to evaluate such advertisements and might ask their physicians for inappropriate medications. But since physicians have the final say as to whether to prescribe a medication for a patient, inappropriate prescriptions would not become more common.

Which of the following would it be most useful to establish in order to evaluate the argument?

A. Whether advertising for prescription medications might alert patients to the existence of effective treatments for minor ailments that they had previously thought to be untreatable

B. Whether some people might go to a physician for no reason other than ask for a particular medication they have seen advertised

C. Whether the proposed law requires prescription-medication advertisements directed to the general public to provide the same information as do advertisements directed to physicians.

D. Whether advertisements for prescription medications are currently an important source of information about newly available medications for physicians

E. Whether physicians would give in to a patient's demands for a prescription medication chosen by the patient when the one originally prescribed by the physician fails to perform as desired.
>>Only option E share relevant details regarding highlighted text in conclusion. Answer "Yes" weakens & "No" strengthen the conclusion.

Which of the following would it be most useful to establish in order to evaluate the argument?

this is an evaluate question.
the correct answer, when answered for ex YES - would support the conclusion, and for ex. No - break down the conclusion. so we need to look for an answer choice that when we answer differently, in one way it will support the conclusion, in another way will destroy the conclusion.

A. Whether advertising for prescription medications might alert patients to the existence of effective treatments for minor ailments that they had previously thought to be untreatable
Yes, it will alert - no effect on the conclusion
No - so what?
thus A, out.

B. Whether some people might go to a physician for no reason other than ask for a particular medication they have seen advertised
Yes they will go - so what?
No - so what?
B out.

C. Whether the proposed law requires prescription-medication advertisements directed to the general public to provide the same information as do advertisements directed to physicians.
Yes, same info - so what?
No - might be problematic, but still the conclusion holds.
C out.

D. Whether advertisements for prescription medications are currently an important source of information about newly available medications for physicians
Yes = no effect on conclusion.
No - no effect on conclusion.

E. Whether physicians would give in to patients’ demands for prescription medication they chose when the one originally prescribed by the physician fails to perform.
AHA! if they give to patients what they want - the conclusion is shattered. if they dont - the conclusion is valid.!

As a general rule, with any CR question (strengthen, weaken, evaluate, etc.) our job is to closely examine the assumptions underlying the connection between the evidence and the conclusion (aka the inference).

In many cases, attacking the evidence or the inference is enough to do the job. For example, if I state, "he committed the crime because his fingerprints were at the scene," then I can negate that argument one of three main ways:

1) ATTACK THE EVIDENCE. If you can prove that his fingerprints weren't at the scene, then this should definitely help--although it is still possible to commit a crime without leaving fingerprints, attacking the evidence can be an effective weakener in most cases.

However, the GMAT is too difficult of a test to give us an answer choice this easy in most cases. Also, in the stem we are told that the evidence (patients' motivations) is irrelevant since doctors have the final say. In other words, the stem argument tells us that the evidence is not closely tied to the conclusion, so attacking the evidence doesn't work here.

2) ATTACK THE ASSUMPTION / INFERENCE BY POINTING OUT ALTERNATE EXPLANATIONS. This is a big one. I might want to consider whether someone who DID leave fingerprints might not have committed the crime, or who else might have left fingerprints there.

STRENGTHEN example: his were the only fingerprints in the house.
WEAKEN example: there were many fingerprints at the house.

3) ATTACK THE CONCLUSION. If you can prove that the crime was never committed, then that would of course do the job, too...but the root of GMAT CR lies in mastering #2.

The problem with Choice B is that a patient's motivations and requests, while a relevant factor, do not directly pertain to the conclusion (the physician's behavior in prescribing inappropriate medications) nearly as much as does the physician him or herself, since we are told in the stem that the doctor is in ultimate charge of that decision.

-Brian

Hi KapTeacherEli - I'm really struggling to see how the answer couldn't be (C). The passage assumes that the advertisements will contain specialised knowledge, therefore by evaluating if it did/didn't, does that not weaken/strengthen the conclusion? I assumed it questions the validity of the counter-premise.

Thanks!

It is illegal to advertise prescription medications in Hedland except directly to physicians, either by mail or in medical journals. A proposed law would allow general advertising of prescription medications. Opponents object that the general population lacks the specialized knowledge to evaluate such advertisements and might ask their physicians for inappropriate medications. But since physicians have the final say as to whether to prescribe a medication for a patient, inappropriate prescriptions would not become more common.

Which of the following would it be most useful to establish in order to evaluate the argument?

Whether advertising for prescription medications might appropriately alert patients to the existence of effective treatments for minor ailments that they had previously thought to be untreatable

The argument is about inappropriate prescriptions given by physicians, NOT the benefits of such advertisements.

Whether some people might go to a physician for no reason other than to ask for a particular medication they have seen advertised

Whether people will go to a physician for the sole reason of asking for a prescription is not entirely relevant. Imagine a world where this is true; the doctor still has every right to deny these new requests, just as the argument states. It does not really change anything. Also, you could say that it is also possible that people come to the doctors for reasons other than asking for a perscription but also ask for one why they are there. Those people could just as well ask for inappropriate prescriptions (even though they could be denied).

Whether the proposed law would require prescription-medication advertisements directed to the general public to provide the same information as advertisements directed to physicians do

Irrelevant to the argument about patient requests.

Whether prescription-medication advertisements directed to physicians are currently an important source of information for physicians about newly available medications

Irrelevant to the argument about patient requests.

Whether physicians would inappropriately agree to a patient’s demand for a prescription medication chosen by the patient when the one originally prescribed by the physician fails to perform as desired

Yes. This implies that sometimes, a doctor will accept a patients request for an inappropriate prescription, which would make inappropriate prescriptions become more common. Remember that doctors have the final say, but what if their final say is to give you an inappropriate prescription, then this will have a huge impact on the question stem's argument.

­
Context:

It is illegal to advertise prescription medications in Hedland except directly to physicians, either by mail or in medical journals.

A proposed law would allow general advertising of prescription medications.

Opposition View:

The general population lacks the specialized knowledge to evaluate such advertisements and might ask their physicians for inappropriate medications.

Premises supporting conclusion:

Physicians have the final say as to whether to prescribe a medication for a patient

Conclusion:

Inappropriate prescriptions would not become more common.

We need to find an option that helps evaluate whether inappropriate prescriptions will become more common.

(A) Whether advertising for prescription medications might alert patients to the existence of effective treatments for minor ailments that they had previously thought to be untreatable
Existence of effective treatments and their prescription cannot be termed inappropriate prescriptions. So, this option is out of scope. We need to evaluate whether inappropriate prescriptions will increase.

(B) Whether some people might go to a physician for no reason other than ask for a particular medication they have seen advertised

Whether people will ask for advertised medicines doesn’t matter. The point is will physicians give inappropriate prescriptions?

(C) Whether the proposed law requires prescription-medication advertisements directed to the general public to provide the same information as do advertisements directed to physicians.

Whether information given is same or different doesn’t matter. Will physicians give more inappropriate prescriptions is our question.

(D) Whether advertisements for prescription medications are currently an important source of information about newly available medications for physicians

It doesn’t matter whether current advertisements to physicians are an important source of information or not. We need to know the impact of advertisement to public.

(E) Whether physicians would give in to a patient's demands for a prescription medication chosen by the patient when the one originally prescribed by the physician fails to perform as desired.

If we answer

“Yes” – Physicians would give in to patient demand then there are chances of inappropriate prescriptions.

“No” – Physicians would not give in to patient demand then there are no chances of inappropriate prescriptions.

The two answers affect the conclusion differently. Hence, this is the correct option.

Answer (E)

Discussion on Useful to Evaluate Questions: https://youtu.be/1JtHjH1lWZc