Clarify prior explanation

@msaber, Happy to help. This argument is comparing surgery and medicine. Regarding medicine, the argument contends that clinical trials are necessary because we do not know how the medicine is going to react to the human body. Regarding surgery, the argument contends that we do not need these types of clinical trials because surgery is related to the skills of the surgeon performing the operation. We're tasked with identifying the flawed reasoning in the argument. In looking at the stimulus, the claims about surgery are quite suspect. The argument says that surgery is different from medicine since it is based on skill, rather than the composition of the treatment. However, we know that this isn't necessarily true; there are some types of surgeries that are very risky, regardless of the level of skill of the surgeons performing them. In looking at the stimulus, we see that the language that the author uses to describe medicine and surgery. With medicine, the author says that clinical trials are necessary because the drug's efficacy only depends on its chemical composition. With surgery, the argument says that surgical skill is transparently related to the outcome of the surgery, but it doesn't ever say that surgical skill is the only thing that the outcome is dependent upon. From this, we know that there could be other things that affect the outcome of a given surgery (such as the inherent risk or invasiveness of the procedure) that could affect the outcome, so clinical trials might actually be a good idea. The argument is mistaking one important component of surgery (the skill of the surgeon) as being the only factor that matters, which clearly isn't the case. The question says, 'The reasoning in the argument is flawed because the argument..." (A) says, "does not consider that new surgical procedures might be found to be intrinsically more harmful than the best treatment previously available" Perhaps the new surgical method is a very risky one. Even if the person performing it is a really skilled surgeon, it does not mean that other things cannot affect the probability of the surgery being successful. (A) picks up on the flaw of the argument that we identified, so it's the correct answer. Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any other questions!

This is really great, thank you! I understand completely now.

@msaber, great! Let us know if you have any more questions!