#18 - Global Reference, Must Be True

[deck1134]

I narrowed it down between B and D and choose B, but am not sure why D is wrong. Is it speculative? Not proven?

[Adam Tyson]

I'll flip that around on you, deck, and ask what evidence there is in the passage to support answer D? We know from the passage that the Europeans were the ones that turned wampum into currency due to their misunderstanding of what it was actually used for, but is there any evidence that prior to then wampum was used "primarily as a means of promulgating official edicts and policies of the Haudenosaune Confederacy"? This question has to be answered based solely on the text in the passage, and any reasonable inferences that could be drawn from that text. If you cannot find the support, then that cannot be the right answer.

So, go back to the passage and seek out evidence to support your contenders. The one that you can support is the right answer, and the one you cannot is not! Use that process every time to decide between multiple contenders, rather than relying on your memory of the passage or your sense of what could or might be true.

[younghoon27]

Hi - on my 2nd review I choose A over B is there just not enough evidence to support A?

[Luke Haqq]

Hi younghoon27!

Yes, your intuition is correct that there isn't enough evidence to support answer choice (A).

To see why (B) is better, first take note of the wording of the question: "The academic researchers mentioned in lines 30–31 would be most likely to subscribe to which one of the following principles?" This tells us (1) that the question is about a specific subject's perspective, (2) it directs readers to a specific line reference, and (3) it asks what we can infer from the passage about this subject's viewpoint (i.e., since it's asking for an inference, it's asking what "must be true" about this viewpoint/perspective based on the passage.

So we're therefore dealing with a must be true question that directs readers to "academic researchers" mentioned in lines 30-31. When given a specific line reference, it's important to read before and after those lines as well, for the purposes of placing this reference in a broader context. Here, the full sentence is: "Academic researchers who oppose biotechnology patents fear that corporate patent holders will charge prohibitively high fees for the right to conduct basic research involving the use of patented materials" (lines 30-34).

In other words, in this part of the passage, academic researchers are discussed as disliking fees for conducting basic research using patented materials. This is what is captured in answer choice (B): "The inventor of a biological material should not be allowed to charge fees that would prevent its use in basic research." Since the passage tells us that these academic researchers dislike fees that are high enough to create barriers to basic research, we can infer from the passage that such researchers think inventors should not impose such fees that prevent uses for basic research.

By contrast, not only does this part of the passage not talk about the market and thus does not provide enough evidence to know (A) is true, it actually seems that the next paragraph provides reason for concluding that the mentioned academic researchers would not agree with it. Answer (A) states, "The competitive dynamics of the market should be allowed to determine the course of basic scientific research." Within a trajectory in which "freely sharing research materials has shifted to a market model" (lines 36-37), academic researchers would prefer the former (freely sharing materials, so they can engage in basic research) to the latter (a market model in which inventors can set fee prices that stifle basic research). Since the question asks about what we can infer that the academic researchers would agree with, we can eliminate (A), since the passage suggests they would not agree with it.

[Kelly R]

Hi PS,

Though I understand why C is the credited response, I was tempted by D, as the first paragraph seems to provide relatively strong support for it. Paragraph one states that "before contact with Europeans, the Haudenosaune... had been developing a form of communication, primarily for political purposes." Though D does mention "official edicts and policies of the Confederacy" (which, to be fair, are not explicitly stated in the passage), edicts and policies do reasonably seem to fall under the umbrella of "political purposes." Was this too big of an assumption to make? Thanks.

[Paul Marsh]

Hi Kelly! While there is certainly support for the wampum being used for political purposes, there is nothing in the passage that says the primary purpose of wampum was to promulgate official edicts and policies of the confederacy. For Must be True RC questions like this, we want to be able to point to a specific section of the passage that explicitly provides support for our answer. (D) just assumes too much beyond what the passage actually says. On the other hand, (B) is based on information explicitly laid out in the first couple sentences of the last paragraph of the passage.

Hope that helps!

[jk2020]

Hi Paul,

In regards to your reply to Kelly, I chose D on this answer because of the sentence, the first of the last paragraph, "It was, however, the formation of the Haudenosaune Confederacy from a group of warring tribes, believed by some to have occurred around 1451 , that supplied the major impetus for making wampum a deliberate system of both arbitrary and pictorially derived symbols designed primarily for political purposes."

"...designed primarily for political purposes."

The timing of D checks out as far as I can tell (before Europeans), as well as it being primarily for those politics purposes.
How is D not the answer?

Thanks

[Jeremy Press]

Hi jk,

A couple of things:

1. It's true that the Confederacy spurred usages of wampum for primarily political purposes (during the period after the Confederacy began). But what about the usages of wampum prior to the Confederacy (which were also prior to contact with Europeans) that are described in the second paragraph? Those usages don't look "primarily political." Rather, the first paragraph describes those usages as involving "objects with religious significance."

2. A second problem with answer choice D is that it's not clear to me from paragraph 3 that we can support the statement that wampum was used specifically to "promulgate official edicts and policies." Rather, it was used to "encode the provisions of the ... constitution." The constitution and its provisions are different from official edicts and policies.

Let us know if that clears up your confusion!

Jeremy

[crispycrispr]

Hi,

Can someone explain why (A) is wrong/why my thinking was wrong? I was hesitant to eliminate it because it mentions contact with Europeans, and the first paragraph also talks about that time frame, and then the last passage talks about using wampum belts to make publicly available items of governmental business. On review, I think I misread the sentence in the last paragraph that said "the belts served to record, store, and make ..." and just pieced together information that the author didn't say was related (?)
Is it wrong because the first paragraph only says that the Haudenosaune used wampum primarily for political purposes? And is it a Shell Game answer?

For some reasons, I found this inference question from this passage more difficult than other ones. Are there any suggested approaches to ones like this?

[Adam Tyson]

Answer A is wrong, crispycrispr, because there is no evidence in the text to support it, and in fact the evidence contradicts it. The only mention of wampum's role as money is in the first paragraph, which tells us that Europeans and Haudenosaune both used it as a medium of exchange, but that "this was due to the Europeans, who misinterpreted the significance of wampum and used it solely to purchase goods from the Haudenosaune." That's a pretty strong indication that wampum was not used as a form of economic exchange prior to the arrival of Europeans.

The text you cited has nothing to do with economic exchange (money). Make sure you rely on text that clearly supports the answer choice directly, with no outside assumptions or assistance.