High-technology medicine is driving up the nation's health care costs. Recent advances in cataract surgery illustrate...
hassay18May 30, 2024
Each of the following, if true, would support a challenge to the author's explanation of the increase in the number of cataract operations EXCEPT:
I have never seen this question stem before. What exactly does this mean? I got the question right because the rest four choices led to the same conclusion but E did not thus I picked E. I understand that this might not have been the best way to go about this question - it doesn't guarantee the correct answer each time however the only reason I did this was because the wording in the question stem was very confusing.
Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.
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When you see a tough question stem, you should break it down clause by clause if possible. Here it asks that if true, each answer will do something Except one. That is, the right answer will be the one that does not do the thing in question.
We can then turn to asking ourselves what the thing in question actually is.
"Support a challenge to the author..." sure sounds like a weakener. To support a challenge would mean to improve something that undermines the author, or in other words, weakens it. The last bit specifying what we are challenging confirms that we are attacking the authors explanation in the passage.
So we are looking for the one thing that does not support a challenge, or the one thing that does not weaken.
Your approach may not be perfect but it is a very good second best. That kind of pattern recognition is useful, and if four answers all do X, and one does Y, you may have a pretty good hint of where to look first.
