Q2 - When a study of aspirin's

[tzyc]

Why (B) does not undermine the argument?
I thoght if the result is uncertain, people cannot be sure about it's effectiveness...
Or is it because of the phrase"could have been", so it does not contradict (B)?

Thank you

[tommywallach]

Hey Strawberry,

Let's take this apart piece by piece:

Conclusion: If results published faster, heart attacks prevented
Premise: 6 weeks passed between discovery that aspirin prevents heart attacks and the publication of that fact

(A) wouldn't undermine the argument at all, because the conclusion never says it was possible for the results to be published faster. It's simply a hypothetical statement.

(B) does not relate to the conclusion. Strawberry, I think your take on the conclusion is "Aspirin prevents heart attacks." If that were the conclusion, it would slightly weaken (though still not enough to be correct) if aspirin didn't work to prevent heart attacks in rats. But the conclusion is actually about the effect of publishing the results, not the results themselves. And remember, something can work in people that doesn't work in rats. We already have a study that definitively proves that aspirin prevents heart attacks in human (See the first sentence).

(C) is totally out of scope. Who cares about ulcers?

(D) is a premise booster. We already knew it took 6 weeks, so this adds nothing.

(E) CORRECT. If you have to take aspirin regularly for two years before you see a benefit, the 6 week delay had no effect on any heart attacks that occurred during the delay. Actually, it did have an effect on heart attacks that occurred for the six weeks just after the two year anniversary of the results from the study came out (before publication). Does that make sense?

Hope that helps!

-t