CET 2025 Slot 1 · Verbal – Page 10
All 50 Verbal questions of CET 2025 Slot 1. Tap Show answer, or open the detailed solution (free login). Page 10 of 14.
Questions 181–184 share this
Most diseases or conditions improve by themselves, are self-limiting, or at least do not follow a steadily downward course. Intervention can consequently appear effective even when it has not caused the improvement. A practitioner of fraudulent medicine can exploit these natural variations by starting treatment when a patient is getting worse.
If the patient improves, the practitioner takes credit; if the condition remains stable, the treatment is said to have stopped the decline. If the patient worsens, the dose was supposedly insufficient; if the patient dies, help was supposedly sought too late. Every outcome is thus interpreted in favour of the treatment.
The few apparent successes will be remembered while failures are forgotten. Chance and natural recovery provide enough variation for occasional successes to accompany almost any treatment. In that sense, it would be a miracle if there were not any “miracle cures”. A testimonial establishes that a patient reports improvement, not that the treatment caused it.
Such explanations also illustrate why the boundary between science and pseudoscience can sometimes be difficult to apply in practice. Disputes about particular alternative treatments may persist while the evidence is incomplete or competing explanations remain. This difficulty does not make every claim equally credible. Comparisons that account for natural recovery can still provide strong reasons to accept or reject an explanation.
Consider the extreme position that any favoured belief should be retained, whatever the evidence, by adjusting other explanations around it. The author rejects this as a guide to judging treatments. An inability to disprove every possible defence of a claim is not a reason to ignore evidence against it. Beliefs must remain open to assessment, and a theory that accommodates every outcome without risk of failure has not thereby demonstrated its truth.
- The apparent cures under discussion occurred in conditions for which spontaneous improvement or fluctuation could not account for the recoveries.
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Answer: A. The apparent cures under discussion occurred in conditions for which spontaneous improvement or fluctuation could not account for the recoveries.
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- The interviewees may have recovered naturally, so their testimonials do not establish that the healer caused their recovery.
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Answer: D. The interviewees may have recovered naturally, so their testimonials do not establish that the healer caused their recovery.
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- It proves that medicine is fundamentally separate from science.
- It proves that pseudoscientific treatments are effective.
- It shows that scientific methods are never useful in assessing treatments.
- It demonstrates that all favoured theories should be retained regardless of evidence.
- It illustrates the difficulty of applying the boundary between science and pseudoscience in some cases.
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Answer: E. It illustrates the difficulty of applying the boundary between science and pseudoscience in some cases.
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- Practical, because it requires no explanation of observations.
- Compassionate, because it always benefits patients.
- Extreme, because beliefs should remain open to assessment and possible rejection in the light of evidence.
- Correct, because every set of beliefs is equally credible.
- Irrelevant, because evidence can never bear on claims about treatments.
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Answer: C. Extreme, because beliefs should remain open to assessment and possible rejection in the light of evidence.