Opthamologists can determine important information about

Question

Opthamologists can determine important information about blood pressure level while performing an eye examination. Doctors have found that high blood pressure levels can precede a cardiac arrest. One can conclude that doctors will be able to predict with greater accuracy impending heart attacks based on information from opthamologists. 

Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument above

(A) Eye examinations provide more detailed information today than they did 35 years ago.
(B) Doctors can establish that changes in eye pressure directly affect the cardiovascular system.
(C) Evidence other than eye pressure has previously enabled doctors to predict impending heart attacks that are predictable on the basis of information from opthamologists.
(D) Doctors have not determined why changes in pressure on the eye fluctuate. 
(E) It has been established that predictable pressure patterns yield predictable pattern of medical symptoms.

chunjuwu · Answer

C, it is so hard. :oops:

It said evidence other than eye pressure has enabled doctors to predict heart attacks that are predictable . Therefore, from opthamologists doctors cannot increase the accuracy to predict the predictable heart attack more.

rthothad · Answer

I would go with â€˜Dâ€™

â€˜Aâ€™, â€˜Bâ€™ & â€˜Câ€™ â€“ Supports the argument, so can be eliminated
 â€˜Câ€™ â€“ Doctors were able to predict impending heart attacks based on information from opthamlogits but these information were about other symptoms rather than eye pressure. I do not feel this weakens the argument.
â€˜Dâ€™ â€“ If the cause to changes in eye pressure were not determined then the doctors could not predict with greater accuracy about the impending heart attack.

swath20 · Answer

I would go with D.

Was struggling between C and D.

What is the OA?

prep_gmat · Answer

C.

The argument makes it seem like eye pressure info from opthalmologists play a crucial role and option C, subtly, undermines it by saying that eye pressure information is not all that it is meant to be.

Option D is incorrect because, even if it is difficult to determine the fluctuations, if you are able to measure the eye pressure, the conclusion would not be weakened.

Only option C makes the conclusion less likely to be true, so C.

vprabhala · Answer

its a toughie.. C talks about heart attack caused by lot of other reasons.. so it should be C.

maaverick · Answer

I'll go with  (D) 

(A) Eye examinations provide more detailed information today than they did 35 years ago. - Irrelevant

(B) Doctors can establish that changes in eye pressure directly affect the cardiovascular system. - Strengthens rather than weakening the argument.

(C) Evidence other than eye pressure has previously enabled doctors to predict impending heart attacks that are predictable on the basis of information from opthamologists. -  information  from opthalmologists may not necessarily mean information on eye pressure. Any kind of info might come from an opthalmologist, which might include the percentage of sugar (which might be detected by symptoms of glucomia) and might affect the cardiovascular system. This, however, does not weaken the argument.

(D) Doctors have not determined why changes in pressure on the eye fluctuate. - If doctors are not sure why the eye pressure changes, they cannot say for sure that an increase in eye pressure might result in cardio-vascular complications or vice-versa. Therefore, given this fact is true, it would lend less credibility to the claim that heart attacks can be predicted based on a certain patter of changes in the eye pressure.


(E) It has been established that predictable pressure patterns yield predictable pattern of medical symptoms. - ruled out again.

prep_gmat · Answer

(C) Evidence other than eye pressure has previously enabled doctors to predict impending heart attacks that are predictable on the basis of information from opthamologists.

While it is true that it can be any kind of information from opth., the argument makes it seem like the information from the opth. will enable doctors to predict cardiac arrests and such a situation is ground breaking. The statement above says that all the info that opth. provide which assists in prediction is possible with other evidence and not necessarily opth. info.

D is incorrect as the argument is not concerned with why the change in eye pressure occurs, but what is the usefulness of that data in cardiac prediction. The stem states that it is possible to determine the eye pressure even if the opths do not know why it fluctuates. While it may be entirely possible that changes if one is not sure about eye press fluctuations then one may not be able to rely on that info for cardiac predictions, nothing in the argument lends credibility to such inference. It is very much possible that once the pressure is determined, that info is very useful to predict heart related stuff and hence D will strengthen the conclusion.

aneel · Answer

I am going for 'C': Doctors predicts heart attacks based on evidence provided by opthamologists other than eye pressure. This actually weakens the argument.

I feel 'D' is an out of scope statement.

chunjuwu · Answer

I'll go with  (D) 



(D) Doctors have not determined why changes in pressure on the eye fluctuate. -  If doctors are not sure why the eye pressure changes , they 
cannot say for sure that an increase in eye pressure might result in cardio-vascular complications or vice-versa. 

Hello, this is the pitfall. Doctors cannot make sure why the eye pressure changes fluctuate,  but they still can determine when  heart attact happen on the basis of the information given by ophthalmologists.

saurya_s · Answer

C is the OA. Ophtalomologist assess eye pressure. C weakens it .

maaverick · Answer

Yes, you're right, chunjuwu. I missed this one!

banerjeea_98 · Answer

I am not sure why C is better than D...if the stem had concluded like this " based on the blood pressure information from opthamologists, "C" wud have made sense, but it says only abt general info, shud we assume that stem only talks abt blood pressure information from optho and nothing else.

HongHu · Answer

Basically the stem says that we can predict blood pressure from eye exams.

C says that the cases we can determine based on eye exam info, we can already determine now, without the eye exam info. So the discovery of eye exam - blood pressure relationship, whether true or not, is not any more useful.

Opthamologists can determine important information about

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