63.3.11 People who browse

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Completely missed this one; I really don't see how B is a necessary assumption. Can someone breakdown by B is necessary?

People on the Internet sometimes can't tell the difference between good medical information and bad medical information. The bad stuff is written more clearly than the good stuff, which makes the bad stuff more appealing to people with zero medical experience. Thus, people who rely on the Internet when diagnosing themselves are probably going to do more harm than good.

What I am looking for: Our conclusion is about diagnosing and harming yourself, which are new ideas, so I expect the correct answer choice to bridge that gap. Specifically, the first sentence talks about how people are going online for "medical information," but the conclusion talks about "diagnosing themselves," which is a part of that more broad idea. Are people going to rely on the quackery when they diagnose themselves? What if they use something else instead? Additionally, the idea of people having zero medical background is talked about as a premise, but the conclusion is about people in general. Do people in general not have any medical background?

Answer A: This is what I picked since it was left after POE. I didn't love it, but I was pretty confident in eliminating the other answers. This answer is wrong since "typically" is too strong. We only need people to diagnose themselves sometimes.

Answer B: Not exclusively rely on scientifically valid info--->Likely do more harm than good. This is for sure a sufficient assumption, but I don't see how this is a necessary assumption. If you negate it: Not exclusively rely on scientifically valid info SOME Not likely do more harm than good, then so what? Our conclusion is about reliance on the web in general, and our premise only states that quackery is appealing to people with ZERO medical experience. How does this answer choice bridge the gap between that people vs. people with zero medical experience? Can't there be people that use primarily scientifically valid info pared with some quackery and not likely do more harm than good? I don't see how that is inconsistent with the argument. I was pretty confident getting rid of this answer choice for that reason. Specifically, I think the idea of "exclusively" is way too strong; can't Not exclusively (sometimes, primarily/but not all, etc.) still work?

Answer C: No harm? Too strong.

Answer We don't know what people assume or how they weight the importance of clear writing.

Answer E: Only if? Way too strong.

Elle2015

I will try to help. I see the stimulus as basically saying that people get online to look up medical information. They often can't tell the difference between actual scientific information and appealing nonsense, so when they rely on the Internet to figure out their medical problems, they're likely to do themselves more harm than good.

A - This is not particularly relevant. It doesn't matter if people who browse the web for medical ... typically do it to self-diagnose or not. According to the conclusion, all we really care about are the people who actually do use the Internet to diagnose themselves. It doesn't matter if they're a majority/minority of those who browse the web for general medical information.

B is necessary because if people use the Internet to self-diagnose and they can't discriminate between nonsense and real science, even if the nonsense is more appealing, they'll probably encounter some of both (some nonsense and some real info) as the stimulus doesn't imply that they don't look at real science/that they only or even mostly look at nonsense, so for them to be doing themselves more harm than good the nonsense has to somehow be overpowering the scientific information they encounter.