Q6 - The best way to increase the blood supply

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Weaken (the Conclusion)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Best way to increase blood supply in P is to encourage more donations from regular donors.
Evidence: In these two other cities, M and F, it was costly and hard to get new donors, and occasional donors don't want to give more. But these cities were successful in getting regular donors to give more often.

Answer Anticipation:
There's a Comparison aspect to this argument and a Prescriptive aspect.

We might weaken the comparative aspect by pointing out some important difference between P and M/F. It should have the effect of, "What was true in M/F isn't necessarily true in P". Maybe P's new and occasional donors are easier to convince. Maybe P's regular donors are already maxing out what's healthy.

We might weaken the Prescriptive aspect by thinking to ourselves how this solution could fail to be "the best way to increase blood supply". Maybe some other way we haven't yet mentioned could be more effective. Maybe THIS plan would backfire (the regular donors get peeved and start donating less).

Correct Answer:
E

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This strengthens. The author assumes this part of the Comparison, or else she wouldn't be citing these cities in claiming that doing something similar would increase blood supply.

(B) This points to a dissimilarity, but it would still strengthen. P has more regular donors than M/F, so a plan targeted at regular donors could potentially work even better in P than it did in M/F.

(C) This strengthens by making it seem like the plan the author is recommending has short term and long term gains.

(D) Since we can't compare this to whether sporadic > regular in M/F, this doesn't seem to have much impact.

(E) BOOM! This points to a problem with the recommended plan -- regular donors are already maxed out, so we can't tap them for more blood.

Takeaway/Pattern: When the question stem says to Strengthen or Weaken a "conclusion" or "claim", then don't be surprised if the answer doesn't really engag with the argument core that much. The argument core here was definitely fishing people into thinking about the potentially dubious Comparison between P and M/F. But (E) would weaken the conclusion regardless of that evidence about M/F.

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