Responding to a pm:

It is an assumption question. It means you are looking for a gap between premises and conclusion. The premises are not enough to take you to the conclusion. You NEED the answer option to reach the conclusion. So the first thing we need to do is chalk out our premises and conclusion.

Premises:
Some scientists are recognized for their brilliance today.
They were once vilified for their work and considered insane during their lifetimes.

Conclusion:
What is considered insane or not insane has changed over time.

Now here is the catch. the premises say that some scientists were considered insane during their lifetime. They are being recognised as brilliant now. The premises do not say that they are not considered insane now - only that they are considered brilliant now. Note that we cannot assume that brilliance and insanity are mutually exclusive traits. Brilliant people can be considered insane too aka "mad scientists" .

To say that what is considered insane has changed over time, we are assuming that some of those scientists who were thought to be insane are not considered insane anymore.

Option (D) tells you this: Not all scientists who were once considered insane are still considered insane today.
So this is the correct answer.

All other options are just confusing or plain irrelevant.
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Some scientists, who today are recognized for their brilliance, were once vilified for their work and considered insane during their lifetimes. It therefore follows that what is considered insane or not insane has changed over time.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

Works of science that are that are considered insane change the way in which the general public defines 'insanity.'
The number of things that are considered insane has decreased with the passage of time.
Public opinion does not determine the validity of scientific research.
Not all scientists who were once considered insane are still considered insane today.
Some scientists who are considered insane today were also considered insane in the past


The previous one was locked

VeritasPrepKarishma

Maam with all due respect,don't you think D would have been right if it were a "must be true question".Because option D is just a paraphrase of the first line.But if we negate option A then we find out that if a scientific work is tagged insane and can't be changed then the hole argument falls apart.

The argument is that what is considered insane or not insane has changed over time.
This is based on the fact that some scientists who were once vilified for their work and considered insane are now recognised for their brilliance.

What is an assumption?

A is incorrect because it may not need to be true that the cause of the change in what is perceived as insane is the scientists' works, but perhaps the scientists themselves.
Second, it may simply just be the case that the public's perception / values have changed.

B - the # of insane things is irrelevant to the conception of current insanity versus previous insanity.

C - similarly. The validity of research is for all we know irrelevant to the definition of insanity.

D - must be true. In fact its almost restating the premise here. D basically says that some scientists are no longer considered insane, thus what is considered insane/ not insane must have changed.

E - E is the converse. We know that in one direction some scientists no longer considered insane today were considered insane in the past, so we don't need to know that some scientists considered insane in the past are still considered insane today.