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The interviewer states that the therapist has claimed that "with rigorous adherence to the proper treatment, any case of insomnia is curable." The interviewer then states, however, "in fact some patients suffering from insomnia do not respond to treatment." The interviewer seems to be challenging the therapist's claim by saying that sometimes patients adhere to the proper treatment, but nevertheless continue to suffer from insomnia. The therapist responds by stating, "If patients do not respond to treatment, this just shows that they are not rigorous in adhering to their treatment," thereby precluding the possibility of some patients suffering from insomnia actually not responding to rigorous proper treatment. Do you see the error he is making? He is saying that if a patient is not responding to treatment, it is not because the treatment didn't work, but rather because the patient is not rigorously adhering to the treatment. Taking the therapist's reasoning, there is no possible way we can have disconfirming evidence. As long as one does not respond to treatment, the therapist will conclude that they are not rigorously adhering to the proper treatment. Thus, answer choice (A) is correct. The therapist's reply to the interviewer precludes the possibility of disconfirming evidence, i.e. it makes the presence of disconfirming evidence impossible. Hope that was helpful! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Many thanks!!!

What is disconfirming evidence?

@Steph, Great question. Disconfirming evidence is evidence that shows that a belief or hypothesis is or may not be true. Does this help? Let us know if you have any other questions!

could you possibly share a brief, different example of where (a) would apply? I didn't choose this as the answer because I am still not really sure what it means.

Hi @saskipper, Thanks for the question! As Ravi mentioned, disconfirming evidence is any evidence that just shows that something might not be true. When we preclude it, we basically make it the case that the other party can’t really use it because it’s not really applicable to the situation anymore. There’s tons of examples of this. Here’s one possible example: generally speaking, we think that school is good for students’ career prospects. But there are some students whose career prospects might not be benefitted by school. These students might be seen as disconfirming evidence, and specifically, they disconfirm the hypothesis that school is good for career prospects. To preclude these students would be to say something like these are the types of students that skip school anyway, and thus don’t get its benefits. Thus, we show that these students don’t apply to the original argument, since they don’t go to school enough to get the benefits and so shouldn’t be counted in the argument. Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.