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This is a really unusual question and took a long time to come up with this reasoning. Any feedback on my reasoning would be appreciated.
Context: There is a new law which will take effect soon and gives the patients legal rights to see their medical records. Doctor’s opines as the following:
Doctor’s Conclusion: patients should not have a legal right to see their medical records.
Reason 1: it will significantly reduce the amount of time that staff can spend on more important duties thus it is time wasting.
Reason 2: No patients will ask for it anyway, based on his experience so far.
Now, reason 1 is not even necessary to mention because reason 2 cancels out; if no patient will ask for it, whether it takes time to retrieve and return files doesn’t matter. They will not be time spent on that task anyway. Now the task is to find one answer choice that will make reason 2 not cancel out the reason 1. In other words, find a scenario in which even if no one asks for the files, it will still be a waste of time as a result of the new law.
(A) Correct. If the new law will require the doctors to be ready to produce records immediately each time they see patients, then reason 1 matters, even if no one asks for it. So with this new law, the reason 2 does not cancel out reason 1.
(B) Wrong. Even if the task of retrieving and returning files fall to the lowest-paid member of the office, if no one will be asking for it, it doesn’t matter how much time it takes to handle the files. Reason 1 is cancelled out by reason 2.
(C) Wrong. Even if this is true that patients will require more time for explanation of their records, reason 1 is still not a good reason if no one will ask for the records. Thus reason 1 is cancelled out by reason 2.
(D) Wrong. If they can get extra payment for the staff to handle the records, it will not be a waste of time so in this scenario, reason 1 is cancelled out even more so.
(E) Wrong. This is no different from what stimulus suggests. If no one asks for the records, reason 1 doesn’t matter. Reason 1 is cancelled out by reason 2.
Comments
Thank you for this detailed write up! Wrong for me on both first try and BR. I was struggling to grasp "reason two doesn't cancel out reason one".
Holy crap, this post was from ages ago...