Passage Summary: Adding medicine to physical therapy doesn't seem to make patients get better any faster or more completely. However, doctors still insist that the medicine is a vital part of the treatment for those patients.

Reasoning: Patients with back injuries recover just as well with physical therapy alone as they do with a combination of drugs and physical therapy, yet doctors claim the drugs are necessary for those who receive them.

Analysis: We are faced with a classic medical head-scratcher: if the final outcome is the same, why bother with the pills? The resolution likely lies in the process of recovery rather than the final result. Perhaps the drugs don't 'cure' the injury better than PT, but they might make the PT possible by managing excruciating pain or reducing inflammation. Look for an answer that explains a specific, necessary function the drugs serve that isn't reflected in the broad 'how well they do' recovery metric.