Why was the above never answered ? I'd like to know why the answer was c and not e
Jacob-RNovember 30, 2018
I’m happy to help. As always, let’s start with the question stem. We are looking for the answer that supports the conclusion in the passage.
In order to find that, we need to understand the logic of the argument. We have a statement that emergency room visits by heroin users grew by more than 25 percent in the 1980s. And we have a conclusion that the use of heroin rose in that decade.
Before jumping to answers, can you see the jump in that logic? What about other possibilities, such as if the use of heroin remained the same or even went down, but that emergency room visits went up for some other reasons, such as reduced stigma or a change in the potential criminal consequences of being discovered to have been using heroin?
A is incorrect because it doesn’t help us make that jump between the premise and the conclusion — it just gives us some extraneous information about the type of heroin users who usually seek medical care.
E is similarly incorrect because it doesn’t bridge the gap. It just tells us that users of heroin identify themselves when they come into the hospital.
Only answer C bridges the gap — it makes clear that the number of hospital visits by heroin users is proportional to heroin usage, which connects the increase in the two (and rules out other possibilities.)
I hope that helps! Please let us know if you have further questions.
