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Difficulty: Very hardEliminating Paradox-Deepening Traps

A large pharmaceutical company implemented a strict new policy prohibiting its sales representatives from offering any gifts, meals, or financial incentives to physicians. The stated goal was to ensure that physicians prescribe the company's medications based solely on clinical merit. However, in the year following the policy's implementation, the company experienced a 25% increase in the prescription rate of its newest, highest-margin medication, even though independent clinical trials demonstrated it to be no more effective than older, significantly cheaper alternatives.

Statement: The apparent discrepancy described above is successfully resolved by the new information that, following the implementation of the policy, competing pharmaceutical companies significantly increased the value and frequency of the financial incentives they offered to the exact same demographic of physicians.

Answer: Answer

Answer

False
The candidate statement provides a classic paradox-deepening trap. If competitors are offering more incentives while the primary company offers none, the standard expectation is that the primary company would lose market share. The fact that the primary company's prescriptions increased by 25% despite this aggressive competitor behavior makes the situation even more puzzling. A valid resolution must explain why the prescriptions increased; this statement merely provides a compelling reason why they should have decreased.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the apparent discrepancy presented in the stimulus.
The paradox: A company stopped offering financial incentives, and its drug is no better but more expensive than alternatives. Yet, the prescription rate for this drug inexplicably increased by 25%.
Understanding the baseline conflict is required before evaluating any potential resolution.
2
Determine the logical expectation if the candidate statement were true.
If competitors significantly increased their financial incentives to the same physicians, the logical expectation is that those physicians would favor the competitors' drugs, leading to a decrease in sales for the company that stopped offering incentives.
Tracing the causal direction of the new information determines its effect on the original paradox.
3
Compare the logical expectation to the actual outcome in the stimulus.
The logical expectation (decreased prescriptions) directly contradicts the actual outcome in the stimulus (a 25% increase in prescriptions).
This comparison reveals whether the candidate statement bridges the gap or widens it.
4
Classify the statement's effect on the paradox.
Because the statement introduces a factor that should have caused the exact opposite of the observed outcome, it is a paradox-deepening trap. Therefore, the claim that it resolves the discrepancy is false.
A statement that exacerbates the contradiction cannot be the correct resolution.

Key Concept

Identifying paradox-deepening traps by evaluating the causal direction of introduced variables.
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Topics

Eliminating Paradox-Deepening Traps

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