With continuous advertising through email, infomercials,

Pls provide explanation for B & C

I see a few questions on this one, so I thought I would share my thoughts in hopes of assisting the community. With CR questions, I prefer to read the question stem first so that I know what to look for in the passage.

Okay, so this is a sort of reverse-assumption question. We need to find what is not a necessary assumption for the argument to hold. This should be a fun question, then, knowing we are going to presented with four correct assumptions for once.

I do not like to spend a lot of time on pre-thinking. Rather, I find it useful to know how the sentences work to advance the argument.

Sentence 1 - We are introduced to a hairgrowth product, Retraligon, and told that it has received continuous advertising.

Sentence 2 - This is more or less the pitch. I feel as if I am watching a Retraligon infomercial. In all seriousness, we get a glimpse into how the product works, as well as its claimed efficacy rate.

Sentence 3 - Our skeptical potential consumer enters the picture, nay-saying. The rest of the lines are contained within the quote. So what can we attack?

Analysis: Presumably, for every balding man to be using Retraligon to treat his baldness, he would have had to have heard about the product. There is no mention of word-of-mouth advertising in the passage, leaving us to speculate that the continuous advertising of sentence 1 is the same as marketing in this answer choice. This is a reasonable assumption for the argument to hold, and for that reason, it cannot be the answer we seek. Red light.

Analysis: The answer starts off well enough, with sustainable hair growth, since a cure would have to be more than temporary, but then even after... triggers a baseless conclusion. Nowhere does the passage state that Retraligon is a one-time-application cure-all. (In fact, I would imagine that if Retraligon had concocted such a product, the company would suppress it, dilute the solution, and market a product that worked only with continued use, but now I am speculating.) The duration of use is simply not mentioned in either the background information or the quotation, so we do not have to assume the truth of the entire statement for the argument to hold. Remember, any weak link breaks the chain. Green light.

Analysis: Again, the argument is based on every balding man being able to use the product, so if there were a significant number of people who exhibit allergic reactions to one of the key ingredients in Retraligon (from sentence 2), then we can conclude that a significant number of people would not be using the product to treat their baldness, and the argument would fall apart. Thus, this is a necessary assumption and is not our answer. Red light.

Analysis: Think about every balding man wanting to get his hands on a certain product. For this to happen, there would have to be enough of that product to go around, end of story. Red light.

Analysis: This was one of the first assumptions my mind conjured up as a reasonable one to make, perhaps influenced by other assumption questions in which the goal was to find the one true assumption. If every balding man cannot afford the treatment, then guess what? Every balding man will not be able to use said treatment, and the argument once again falls through. Red light.

In short, make sure every word counts in CR answer choices. If you can find even one or two small things to debate outright, then get rid of those answer choices. All the pieces have to fit logically, not just the ones you choose to focus on.

- Andrew

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