Doctor: The patient had been experiencing back and leg pain. A computerized scan suggested that there was pressure on...

shunhe on June 13, 2020

Hi @dannyod,

Thanks for the question! So let’s go over the doctor’s argument again. She’s saying that the patient is experiencing certain pain that may have resulted from pressure, and so she injected cortisone to the nerve, which reduced pain. The doctor then concluded that pressure on the nerve in question was causing the pain.

Now we’re looking for an assumption required by the doctor’s argument. Remember that in these cases, we can negate the answer choices and see if the argument falls without them. If it does, then that answer choice is an assumption on which the argument depends.

Now let’s take a look at (C), which tells us that the pain relief didn’t occur merely through the patient’s belief in the efficacy of the cortisone. Negating the assumption would mean that the pain relief did occur merely through the patient’s belief in the efficacy of the cortisone; the word merely tells us that it is the belief, and the belief only, that would be responsible for the pain relief. But if this is true, then the doctor can’t conclude based on the effectiveness of the cortisone treatment that the source of the pain was from the pressure on the nerve. The doctor’s argument runs:

P1: Patient experiences pain.
P2: The pain could be from a result of pressure.
P3: I gave the patient a cortisone shot, which reduced the pressure, which resulted in pain relief.
C: The original source of the pain was the pressure.

But if the patient had pain relief just because of the shot, it’s possible that the original source of the pain wasn’t from the pressure.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.