Self-study
Support Last year, pharmaceutical manufacturers significantly increased the amount of money they spent promoting new drugs, which they do mainly by sending sales representatives to visit physicians in their offices. ████████ ███ █████ ███ █████ ███ ██ ███████ ██ ███ ████ ██████ ███ ███████████████ ███████ ████ ████ ████ ██████ ████ ██ ████ ██ ███ ██████████ █████████ ████ ████ ████ ██████████████████ ██████ ██████████ ████ ███████ ██ ███████ ██████ ██ ██████████████ █████ ████████████████
Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The author hypothesizes that the additional promotion made physicians less willing to receive visits by sales representatives. This is based on the fact that after the additional promotion began, the average number of visits to physicians per representative fell from 640 to 501.
Notable Assumptions
The author assumes there’s no other explanation for the drop in average number of visits per representative.
9.
Which one of the following, ██ █████ ████ ███████ ███ █████████
a
Most pharmaceutical manufacturers █████████ ███ ████ ██ █████ █████ ██████ ██ ████ █████ █████ ███████████████ █████ ██████ ████ ████ ██ ████ ██████████
This presents another potential explanation for the drop in average number of visits per representative. If the number of representatives increased, so that representatives could spend more time on each physician, we’d expect average number of visits per rep to go down.
Alternate explanation
Alternate explanation
Weaken: Introduce or support an alternate explanation for a phenomenon.
Strengthen: Helps to eliminate an alternate explanation for a phenomenon.
b
Physicians who receive ██████ ████ ██████████████ █████ ███████████████ ███████ ██████ ████ ███████ ██ ██████████ ████ ███ ████████████████ ██████████
Whether physicians accept free samples doesn’t affect how we interpret the drop in average number of visits per representative.
c
Most pharmaceutical companies ███ ███ ████████ ███ ██████ ██ █████ ████ █████ █████████ █████ ███████ ███████████ ████████ ████████ ██ ██████████
This concerns direct advertising to consumers, which has no clear impact on advertising in the form of sending representatives to physicians.
d
Most physicians who █████ ██ ███████ █ █████ ████ █ ██████████████ █████ ██████████████ ████ ███ ████ ██████████████ ████ ████ ████ ██████ █ █████ █████
This concerns the number of times a physician will see the same representative. This has no clear impact on how we interpret a statistic about how many overall visits an individual representative makes per year.
Failed alternate explanation
Failed alternate explanation
Weaken Qs: Answers that try to introduce an alternate explanation, but fall short, or try to explain a different phenomenon.
Strengthen Qs: Answers that try to eliminate an alternate explanation, but fall short, or try to eliminate an explanation for a different phenomenon.
e
The more visits █ █████████ ████████ ████ █ ██████████████ █████ ███████████████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ██ ███ ██ ██ █████████ █████ ████ ██ ████ ████████████████ ████████
This suggests that visits to a physician can be effective, if they occur. But the author’s position is that there were fewer visits this year. So, (E) is consistent with the author’s position.