Medical ethicist: Medical schools should not allow their students to

Question

Medical ethicist: Medical schools should not allow their students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies. When psychological resesarchers gave medical students small promotional gifts with a drug brand logo, those students' favourable attitude toward the brand increased. This shows that such gifts can bias students toward certain brands. In their future careers as doctors, this could lead them to make prescription choices that are not in patients' best interests.

Which of the following could most accurately express the main conclusion of the medical ethicist's argument?

A. No medical school should allow its students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies.
B. Even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies bias medical students toward certain pharmaceutical brands.
C. A bias toward certain pharmaceutical brands could lead doctors to make prescription choices that are not in patients' best interests.
D. Gifts from pharmaceutical companies to medical students inappropriately influence those students in their future careers as doctors.
E. Research found that small promotional gifts with a drug brand logo increased medical students' favourable attitude toward that brand.

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Official Answer

A

Fish181 · Accepted Answer

It can't be C. That is an inference based off of the passage.

This problem asks us to restate the conclusion of the passage. This means that the answer choice must only contain explicitly mentioned information in the passage. There cannot be inferences or any assumptions. You just have to restate the exact same conclusion from the passage in different words and that is your answer choice.

If you correctly identified the conclusion in the passage, you would see that the first sentence of the passage is actually the conclusion. If you have trouble seeing that, the reason is that it gives the "call to arms" or what should be done given the information provided. This makes it the conclusion.

So your job now is to find the answer choice that simply restates in different words this sentence:

"Medical schools should not allow their students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies."

option A is pretty darn close. "No medical school should allow its students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies."

To get this one right you have to be able to properly identify the conclusion in the passage. If you had trouble doing that, you may have a deficiency. Regardless of the question type you should always know the conclusion of the passage before moving on to the answer choices.

KarishmaB · Answer

What is the conclusion of an argument - the opinion of the author. It is what he wants to tell you, wants to say and that is why he wrote the argument. 
If you break down the given argument, what would you say is the conclusion? It will be the first sentence:

Medical schools should not allow their students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies. 
 means
All medical schools should not allow their students to ...

We cannot eliminate an option based on "too extreme." If the author has given an extreme conclusion, you need to identify it as such.

A. No medical school should allow its students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies.

Exactly what the author concludes. Hence it has to be the answer.

Answer (A)

sayan640 · Answer

Is not option A too extreme ?  KarishmaB   GMATNinja

Posted from my mobile device

pintukr · Answer

In my opinion,

A is the 'inference' on basis of the contents of the stimulus since it's not explicitly stated.

while,

'C' is indeed the conclusion in respect of the argument.

ragsharma · Answer

I had to choose between A and D. Looks like A is an intermediary conclusion. D could have been the main conclusion if it had explicitely mentioned the inappropriate influence. Since it was vague and not saying that "prescription choices that are not in patients' best interests." I went with A

sayan640 · Answer

MartyMurray  Would you like to explain this question ?

Posted from my mobile device

Heisenberg_1 · Answer

The answer B and answer especially C contain the word " Certain " which might be the reason that these answer choices are wrong.

The word certain here implies that for some pharmaceutical companies the gifts might be not okay, but for some other the gift might be okay.

MartyMurray · Answer

Medical ethicist: Medical schools should not allow their students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies. When psychological resesarchers gave medical students small promotional gifts with a drug brand logo, those students' favourable attitude toward the brand increased. This shows that such gifts can bias students toward certain brands. In their future careers as doctors, this could lead them to make prescription choices that are not in patients' best interests.

Which of the following could most accurately express the main conclusion of the medical ethicist's argument?

In an argument, the main conclusion is the final conclusion that is supported by everything else in the argument. So, to find the correct answer to this question, we have to analyze the argument to see what conclusion is supported by everything else.

A. No medical school should allow its students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies.

This choice says in a slightly different way the same thing the first sentence of the passage says. So, lets see whether the first sentence states the main conclusion by analyzing the structure of the argument.

Medical schools should not allow their students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies.

This first statement of the argument could be the main conclusion if it's supported by all the other statements.

When psychological resesarchers gave medical students small promotional gifts with a drug brand logo, those students' favourable attitude toward the brand increased.

This is simply stated as fact and is not supported by any other statement in the passage. So, it can't be the main conclusion.

This shows that such gifts can bias students toward certain brands.

"This shows that" means "this supports the conclusion that." So, "such gifts can bias students toward certain brands," is a conclusion supported by the previous statement.

However, it's not the main conclusion since, as we'll see, it helps to support the first statement in the passage. So, it's not the final conclusion.

In their future careers as doctors, this could lead them to make prescription choices that are not in patients' best interests.

Notice that, while this statement is related to the previous statement, it's not supported by the previous statement. Rather, this statement expresses an opinion of the medical ethicist's for which no support is provided. So, this statement cannot be the main conclusion.

Meanwhile, this statement supports the first statement of the passage. After all, the fact that gifts biasing students toward certain brands could lead them to make prescription choices that are not in patients' best interests logically supports the conclusion that "Medical schools should not allow their students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies."

So, we see that the first sentence of the passage states the main conclusion. Thus, since this choice says the same thing the first sentence of the passage says, this choice accurately expresses the main conclusion of the medical ethicist's argument.

Keep.

B. Even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies bias medical students toward certain pharmaceutical brands.

"Minor gifts" in this choice means the same thing as "small promotional gifts" in the argument. So, since "such gifts" in the argument refers to "small promotional gifts, "this choice means basically the same thing as "such gifts can bias students toward certain brands," in the argument.

As we saw in our analysis of the argument for choice (A), "such gifts can bias students toward certain brands," is a conclusion supported by another statement in the passage.

At the same time, we also saw that ""such gifts can bias students toward certain brands," is not the main conclusion since it in turn helps to support the first statement in the passage.

So, this choice does not express the main conclusion.

Eliminate.

C. A bias toward certain pharmaceutical brands could lead doctors to make prescription choices that are not in patients' best interests.

As we saw in our analysis of choice (A), the final statement of the argument, which expresses basically what this choice expresses, is not a supported conclusion. Rather, it's an unsupported opinion of the medical ethicist's that supports the first statement of the passage.

Eliminate.

D. Gifts from pharmaceutical companies to medical students inappropriately influence those students in their future careers as doctors.

Notice that the argument is about what experimental results indicate. They indicate that "gifts  can  bias students" and that "this  could  lead them to make prescription choices that are not in patients' best interests."

So, the argument is about what "can" and "could" occur. It's not about what actually occurs presently, as in, the argument does not indicate that, as this choice says, gifts from pharmaceutical companies do in fact influence students.

So, this choice is not the main conclusion of the argument since this choice is not supported by the statements in the argument.

Eliminate.

E. Research found that small promotional gifts with a drug brand logo increased medical students' favourable attitude toward that brand.

As we saw in our analysis of the argument for choice (A), the fact that "When psychological resesarchers gave medical students small promotional gifts with a drug brand logo, those students' favourable attitude toward the brand increased," is not a conclusion of the argument. Rather, it provides support for a conclusion that in turn supports the main conclusion.

Eliminate.

Correct answer:  A

Kavicogsci · Answer

AjiteshArun 
Two quick questions here:
1. "In their future careers as doctors, this could lead them to make prescription choices that are not in patients' best interests." What does 'this' refer back to?
2 Why can't the final statement -"In their future careers as doctors, this could lead them to make prescription choices that are not in patients' best interests" be the main conclusion?
3. Why can't D be the answer?

Marcchu · Answer

Most question choices rephrase part of the argument in the question stem. You can easily eliminate d since it concerns doctors' future career, while the argument is centered around doctors acting in patients' best interest.

For the rest of the answer choices, an easy way to approach is this: a conclusion can't provide support for another statement—if this is the case, the statement is just an assumption.

Test this out!

A.  No medical school should allow its students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies. 
 It would not act as support for doctors acting in patients' best interest, or logo impact favourability

B. Even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies bias medical students toward certain pharmaceutical brands. 
 Can, and is used as support for not accepting gift

C. A bias toward certain pharmaceutical brands could lead doctors to make prescription choices that are not in patients' best interests. 
 is used as support for not allowing students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies

E. Research found that small promotional gifts with a drug brand logo increased medical students' favourable attitude toward that brand. 
 Same as B

Hope this helps!

shreyans4757583 · Answer

The method to solve this question is pretty straightforward. Infact it isn't a special method just basic comprehension, but I think this has been missed in the discussion so far.

Just focus on the flow of the argument :   Medical schools should not allow their students to accept even minor gifts from pharmaceutical companies.  ( why ? because)   When psychological resesarchers gave medical students small promotional gifts with a drug brand logo ,  (then)   those students' favourable attitude toward the brand increased.   (and this leads to)   This shows that such gifts can bias students toward certain brands.   (why will this bias be bad ? because)   In their future careers as doctors, this could lead them to make prescription choices that are not in patients' best interests.   So because of all these reasons medical schools should not allow their students to accept even minor gifts. This is the conclusion because all the other sentences and independent clauses lead to this.

Just to illustrate: Making biased prescription isn't in the best interest of the patients -> researchers discovered gifts from brands can create biases as they can create favourable beliefs in mind of students -> therefore schools should not allow brands to give their students minor gifts.

So, all the other options except A are automatically incorrect because they simply rehearse the premise.

Just because there were no flow markers like 'then', 'because', or 'why' the passage becomes seemingly convoluted. But once read properly this link and flow of thought should be very apparent. Basically the first sentence could have been easily shifted to the last sentence of the paragraph and it would have still made complete sense and would have exactly the same meaning. And if you would notice the first sentence is literally a stated fact and other sentences are too and a lot of gmat CR questions follow this type of pattern where there are no connecting markers. In easy words all the sentences are basically disparate stated facts which are linked together to form an argument with a premise and conclusion, the connections are meant to be made implicity in your brain while reading.

For me this was the very last question for the reattempt of the 4th official mock. I was stuck on this option too. I had to go through the passage twice and break it down. But for me once I brokedown the problem again it became clear that A is the correct option.

Medical ethicist: Medical schools should not allow their students to

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