While proponents argue about the benefits of vaccination for children,...
While proponents argue about the benefits of vaccination for children, there is hardly any concrete data to back up their claims. Not only is the efficacy of the vaccines questionable but there are also possible chances that vaccines cause various illnesses such as autism. Children who have been vaccinated have a probability of 0.5% of getting the diseases that they have been vaccinated against while the national average of all the children who get the disease, including the children who have not been vaccinated, is 0.52%. So, there is hardly any improvement in the prevention rate because of vaccination.
Which of the following options would help the most to evaluate the given argument?
Argument Analysis
Pre-Thinking
Conclusion Clarification
The argument concludes that there is hardly any improvement in the prevention rate because of vaccination. The argument is based on certain facts and one of these facts is that rate of disease in vaccinated children is 0.5% whereas that in all children is 0.52%, which isn’t substantially high.
Pre-Thinking Approach
In order to evaluate the linkage, we’ll pre think assumptions by thinking of the conditions that will decrease our belief in the conclusion. The assumptions then will be that these conditions don’t exist. To do so, let’s look at linkage 1 and understand the conditions under which it doesn’t hold.
Linkage#1 – Children who have been vaccinated have a probability of 0.5% of getting the diseases that they have been vaccinated against while the national average of all the children who get the disease, including the children who have not been vaccinated, is 0.52%.
Falsification Condition: What if, a significant majority of the children are vaccinated? In such a case, the national average of all the children who get the disease would prominently be a reflection of vaccinated children and thus not likely to be considerably different from probability of vaccinated children. If we are to look at effectiveness of vaccination, we need to compare vaccinated children against non-vaccinated.
- Instance: What if 90% of all the children are indeed vaccinated? In such a case, the overall probability rate (for all the children) will be dominated by this 90%, implying that the vaccinated children are responsible for bringing down the probability rate.
Accordingly, the author assumes that the VC did not form a significant majority of the children for whom the probability rate was calculated.
Therefore, any question whose answer will reveal the individual weight of the children in the two categories (VC and NVC) will help us evaluate the argument better.
With this pre-thinking in mind, let’s evaluate the answer choices.
Answer Choices
A
What percentage of children is vaccinated in the country?
Correct
This choice is written along the lines of our pre-thinking.
B
By what age are children generally administered all the required vaccinations?
Incorrect – Irrelevant
The answer to the question posed in this choice will not yield any relevant information as the author has not established a link between a child’s age and its contracting diseases.
C
What is the national average for the prevalence of autism in children?
Incorrect – Irrelevant
The prevalence of autism among children is not the main focus of the argument. The point regarding autism was raised by the author to make his/her case stronger regarding the apparent lack of benefits and possible side effects from vaccinating children. The actual conclusion deals with claiming that there is hardly any improvement in the prevention of disease from vaccination.
D
What are the possible measures to determine the efficacy of a vaccine?
Incorrect – Irrelevant
This question is about the methods which can help us in finding out the efficacy of a vaccine. But we are only concerned with the results of these methods i.e. the efficacy of vaccines, not in the methods themselves
E
Of the children who have been vaccinated, what proportion has access to proper medical care once they get infected with the diseases that they were vaccinated against?
Incorrect – Irrelevant
The focus of the argument is not the medical care that the children receive after they have contracted the disease they were vaccinated against. The focus is whether the children who have been vaccinated against a particular disease have better chances at not contracting that disease vis-à-vis those children who have not been vaccinating against it. Hence, the answer to his question will not yield any relevant information to evaluate the given argument.