Self-study
Conclusion Public health will improve more quickly in the wake of new medical discoveries if medical researchers abandon their practice of waiting until their findings are published in peer-reviewed journals before informing the press of important research results. ████ ██ ███████ ███ ██████ ███████ ██ ███ ███████ ███████████ ██████ ██████ ██ ███ ████ ███████████ ██ █████ ██ ███████ █████ ███████ ███ ███ ███████████ ███████ ██ ███████████ ████ █████
Argument Breakdown
The argument concludes that improvements in public health will be speeded up if medical researchers skip peer-review and immediately release new results. In support, the argument explains that releasing new research enables people to then improve their health based on that information. However, peer-review is inherently very slow (so logically limits the rate of public health improvement).
Analysis: Causal Reasoning
This is a causal argument, proposing that skipping peer-review would cause a speedup in public health improvement, via the mechanism of people using new information to improve their health. At each step of the argument, there are assumptions built in that we can identify.
For example, the argument's proposed mechanism requires assuming that the press will publish non-peer-reviewed results, and that the public will use this information. And even if that were guaranteed, we'd need to assume that the results will still be useful for public health despite lacking the safeguards of peer-review.
Any assumption necessary to the argument can also be used to weaken. By undermining an assumption, the argument as a whole is undermined.
12.
Which one of the following ██ ██ ██████████ ██ █████ ███ ████████ ████████
a
Many medical researchers ██ ███ █████ ██ █████ ██ █████████ ████ █████ ███ ████████ ██ ██ █ ████████ ██████
We already know that
b
Reviewers for many ███████ ████████ ███ ███ ██████████ ███████ ████████████
It's unclear what effect (B) has on the reliability of peer-review. And since we're talking about skipping peer-review altogether, who's doing the reviewing doesn't really make a difference to the argument one way or the other.
c
People would use ███ ███████ ███████████ ████ ██ ██ ████ ███ █████ █████████ ██ █████████████ █████████
(C) affirms the argument's causal mechanism for how skipping peer-review would benefit public health. For the information to be useful, people would have to actually use it; that makes (C) a necessary assumption.
d
The peer-review process █████ ██ ███████ ██ ██████ ██ ███████ █ ███████████ ███████████ ██ ██████ ███████
The argument explicitly states that
e
New medical information ████ ██ █████ █████████ ██ █████████████ ████████ ████ ███ ███████ ███████ ██████ ██████████
(E) attempts to strengthen the argument by offering another benefit to skipping peer-review. But this isn't truly necessary to the argument—even if peer-reviewed research got lots of attention, it could still be released faster without peer-review.