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Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharma 15 Aug 2022, 09:03
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I did not like choice (D) because it talks about "neighboring town"

Researchers using older, less sensitive technology detected the same drugs several decades ago in the public drinking water of a neighboring town but could find no discernible health effects.

Normally, we might eliminate an answer choices that talks about some other place. In other words,
the water in City X might be different than the water in neighboring town, so comparison of these two water seemed irrelevant to me.

Any thoughts?
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Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharma 15 Aug 2022, 09:29
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Normally, we might eliminate an answer choices that talks about some other place. In other words,
the water in City X might be different than the water in neighboring town, so comparison of these two water seemed irrelevant to me.

Any thoughts?
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You will definitely have to re-calibrate your reasoning with this sort of thing.
Given 2 data pools / settings / backgrounds of the same type—e.g., 2 cities, or 2 patients having the same surgery, or (as in this situation) 2 municipal water supplies—you should assume that analogies DO exist, and that evidence from one setting ••IS•• relevant to the other one, unless you are given specific reasons to conclude otherwise.

In this problem, you should assume that "the public drinking water of a neighboring town" ••IS•• relevant to the drinking water of City X.

In real life, I bet you're well aware of this.
Let's say you're considering whether to have a certain surgery. In that case, you'd look at medical data from OTHER patients who are demographically similar to you (age, sex, ethnicity)—right?
Hopefully it's obvious that those other patients' results ••ARE•• relevant to your situation, UNLESS there are medical differences between you and them that invalidate the analogy.

Yes?

If you tried to apply the same sort of reasoning you're proposing here, then you would actually end up concluding that ALL medical research is completely useless and irrelevant to you—unless you yourself were a subject of the research! That's absurd, of course; research on other subjects like you IS relevant by default.
For the same reason, the municipal water supplies of other cities in the same region are definitely relevant here.
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Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharma 15 Aug 2022, 09:31
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You will definitely have to re-calibrate your reasoning with this sort of thing.
Given 2 data pools / settings / backgrounds of the same type—e.g., 2 cities, or 2 patients having the same surgery, or (as in this situation) 2 municipal water supplies—you should assume that analogies DO exist, and that evidence from one setting ••IS•• relevant to the other one, unless you are given specific reasons to conclude otherwise.

In this problem, you should assume that "the public drinking water of a neighboring town" ••IS•• relevant to the drinking water of City X.

In real life, I bet you're well aware of this.

[...]

If you tried to apply the same sort of reasoning you're proposing here, then you would actually end up concluding that ALL medical research is completely useless and irrelevant to you—unless you yourself were a subject of the research! That's absurd, of course; research on other subjects like you IS relevant by default.
For the same reason, the municipal water supplies of other cities in the same region are definitely relevant here.
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Please take a look at this other official problem, which operates on the same type of principle.
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Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharma 28 Dec 2022, 13:49
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Hi RonTargetTestPrep AnishPassi GMATNinja ReedArnoldMPREP - my question is on the argument itself - would you agree there are 3 different premises, all pointing to the same conclusion?

These 3 premises are independent of each other.

Thus the OA -- could be strengthening any of the 'assumptions' (aka'jumps) between either of the three premises and the conclusion

An assumption -- is visualized as an arrow in my screenshot
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Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharma 28 Dec 2022, 14:22
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Hi RonTargetTestPrep AnishPassi GMATNinja ReedArnoldMPREP - my question is on the argument itself - would you agree there are 3 different premises, all pointing to the same conclusion?

These 3 premises are independent of each other.

Thus the OA -- could be strengthening any of the 'assumptions' (aka'jumps) between either of the three premises and the conclusion

An assumption -- is visualized as an arrow in my screenshot
Show more

Personally, I'd structure this more as an "A and B therefore C" argument.


"There is a very low amount of drugs in the water, only detectable by special tools." (A)

AND/(Therefore? Kind of? Not a very strong therefore but the argument kind of implies it)

"Drugs could have been there for a long time, and we've seen no health effects" (B...Kind of a B1 + B2 combo)

THEREFORE

"Drugs don't pose a big health risk." (C)


My big questions on this one were:

"Is that small amount small enough to not matter?"

and

"If it has been there for a while with no health effects, has something changed that would now make it a health risk? (e.g. did we start putting something else in the water that would combine with these drugs to make it a health risk?"

So I think, more or less, the answer to your question here is 'yes,' you can look at the assumptions that join different premises to the same conclusion. Any one is worth questioning.
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Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharma 28 Dec 2022, 15:50
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jabhatta2
Hi RonTargetTestPrep AnishPassi GMATNinja ReedArnoldMPREP - my question is on the argument itself - would you agree there are 3 different premises, all pointing to the same conclusion?

These 3 premises are independent of each other.

Thus the OA -- could be strengthening any of the 'assumptions' (aka'jumps) between either of the three premises and the conclusion

An assumption -- is visualized as an arrow in my screenshot

Personally, I'd structure this more as an "A and B therefore C" argument.


"There is a very low amount of drugs in the water, only detectable by special tools." (A)

AND/(Therefore? Kind of? Not a very strong therefore but the argument kind of implies it)

"Drugs could have been there for a long time, and we've seen no health effects" (B...Kind of a B1 + B2 combo)

THEREFORE

"Drugs don't pose a big health risk." (C)


My big questions on this one were:

"Is that small amount small enough to not matter?"

and

"If it has been there for a while with no health effects, has something changed that would now make it a health risk? (e.g. did we start putting something else in the water that would combine with these drugs to make it a health risk?"

So I think, more or less, the answer to your question here is 'yes,' you can look at the assumptions that join different premises to the same conclusion. Any one is worth questioning.
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Thank you so much ReedArnoldMPREP - Do you see any 'relationship/connection/assumption' between (A) and Combo B [B1 + B2] ?

I think the passage does make an assumption that -- because [A] is allegedly true, Combo B [B1+ B2] IS PROBABLY true.

i.e - seems like (A) and combo B are connected as well

I say this because of the red circle in the screenshot
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Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharma 28 Dec 2022, 16:30
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Hi RonTargetTestPrep AnishPassi GMATNinja ReedArnoldMPREP - my question is on the argument itself - would you agree there are 3 different premises, all pointing to the same conclusion?

These 3 premises are independent of each other.

Thus the OA -- could be strengthening any of the 'assumptions' (aka'jumps) between either of the three premises and the conclusion

An assumption -- is visualized as an arrow in my screenshot

Personally, I'd structure this more as an "A and B therefore C" argument.


"There is a very low amount of drugs in the water, only detectable by special tools." (A)

AND/(Therefore? Kind of? Not a very strong therefore but the argument kind of implies it)

"Drugs could have been there for a long time, and we've seen no health effects" (B...Kind of a B1 + B2 combo)

THEREFORE

"Drugs don't pose a big health risk." (C)


My big questions on this one were:

"Is that small amount small enough to not matter?"

and

"If it has been there for a while with no health effects, has something changed that would now make it a health risk? (e.g. did we start putting something else in the water that would combine with these drugs to make it a health risk?"

So I think, more or less, the answer to your question here is 'yes,' you can look at the assumptions that join different premises to the same conclusion. Any one is worth questioning.

Thank you so much ReedArnoldMPREP - Do you see any 'relationship/connection/assumption' between (A) and Combo B [B1 + B2] ?

I think the passage does make an assumption that -- because [A] is allegedly true, Combo B [B1+ B2] IS PROBABLY true.

i.e - seems like (A) and combo B are connected as well

I say this because of the red circle in the screenshot
Show more

Yeah, I noticed that as well, that's why I wrote:

"AND/(Therefore? Kind of? Not a very strong therefore but the argument kind of implies it)"

It's a realllllly weak argument, but I agree there is kind of a 'therefore' there. However, it's not really an important 'therefore' for the overall reasoning that gets to the conclusion. The structure is basically:

"A, therefore kind of B."

"A and kind of also B, therefore C."

Meaning: A implies C, and, if Implies B, B also implies C.
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Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharma 16 Mar 2023, 01:14
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Hi experts GMATNinja KarishmaB
egmat



I have a question here: Had this been a weaken question then A could have been correct, right?

Low level of drugs -----> not a significant health hazard
in this CE relation, if we reverse this relation:

So, in order to weaken, we can say : Not a significant health hazard ----> low level of drugs
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Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharma 16 Mar 2023, 03:34
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Alka10
Hi experts GMATNinja KarishmaB
egmat



I have a question here: Had this been a weaken question then A could have been correct, right?

Low level of drugs -----> not a significant health hazard
in this CE relation, if we reverse this relation:

So, in order to weaken, we can say : Not a significant health hazard ----> low level of drugs
Show more

No, option (A) doesn't weaken our conclusion. It has no impact on our conclusion.

"If A, then B" will help our conclusion. But that doesn't mean that "If B, then A" will weaken our conclusion. It is still possible that "If A, then B" also holds. In case of "If and only if" structures, both hold.

So if we are given "If B, then A," it doesn't imply anything about whether "If A then B" is true or not.

In our question, "If no discernible effects, then not a hazard" would help.
Option (A) says "If not a hazard, then no discernible effect." It has no impact on our conclusion.
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Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharma 07 Aug 2024, 01:52
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Hi, is it possible to eliminate A because it states exactly the same thing as in the passage? We are looking for extra info that would strengthen the conclusion, hence D looks better.
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Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharma 10 Aug 2024, 23:12
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Hi, is it possible to eliminate A because it states exactly the same thing as in the passage? We are looking for extra info that would strengthen the conclusion, hence D looks better.
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­Two things to watch out for here:

1) We aren't looking for a "better" strengthener. One answer should strengthen, and the other four should not.
2) It's very rare for an answer to simply repeat info from the argument. You're right that if it did, that wouldn't be a strengthener. In fact, even something that makes a premise look more likely isn't a strenghener. Our job is to believe the premises, so we don't need to support them. But my main point here is that if an answer SEEMS to repeat the text, look again. It almost never does.

In this case, as others have pointed out above, A is a *reversal* of the logic used in the argument. You can take a look through previous rundowns and then follow up if it's not clear. But in general, expect that there will be some difference between each answer and the text of the argument.
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Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharma 29 Aug 2025, 07:52
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A) not relevant, also they could just not be realizing health effects are coming from the water being tainted
B) not relevant, they never discuss removing them in the passage
C) if we don't know their is substance in the water we can't link sickness to the water
D) If the substances at these levels have been in water for decades and they haven't been linked to health problems, clearly they aren't dangerous
E) works backwards from premise
gmatt1476
Researchers in City X recently discovered low levels of several pharmaceutical drugs in public drinking water supplies. However, the researchers argued that the drugs in the water were not a significant public health hazard. They pointed out that the drug levels were so low that they could only be detected with the most recent technology, which suggested that the drugs may have already been present in the drinking water for decades, even though they have never had any discernible health effects.

Which of the following, if true, would most strengthen the researchers' reasoning?

A. If a drug found in drinking water is not a significant public health hazard, then its presence in the water will not have any discernible health effects.

B. There is no need to remove low levels of pharmaceutical drugs from public drinking water unless they present a significant public health hazard.

C. Even if a substance in drinking water is a public health hazard, scientists may not have discerned which adverse health effects, if any, it has caused.

D. Researchers using older, less sensitive technology detected the same drugs several decades ago in the public drinking water of a neighboring town but could find no discernible health effects.

E. Samples of City X's drinking water taken decades ago were tested with today's most recent technology, and none of the pharmaceutical drugs were found.


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