#16 - Specific Reference, Must Be True, Purpose

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (B).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[lsatmiracle]

Hi! I've done this passage a few times and I always get this question consistently wrong. I picked A - I get that it's wrong because there's no way to know that Payne's findings had the direct impact of research in nuclear fusion. But I can't wrap my mind around how B is right. How do we know that nuclear fusion research was partially a reaction of Payne's FELLOW SCIENTISTS TO HER interpretation? I thought this was a stretch. Help? Thanks!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi lsatmiracle,

This passage has an interesting argument and structure, that I think is helpful in understanding this question. It starts by introducing our key scientist here, Cecilia Payne. It describes the orthodox view on how the sun produces energy and the component elements of the sun. It then talks about why Payne questioned the orthodox view that the sun was mostly iron---it didn't explain the fossil record. Her analysis of the data showed that the sun was mostly hydrogen and helium, with very little iron. But her fellow scientists didn't take her position seriously.

Then we get to the last paragraph. What would we expect to go here? I'd want to know why. Why didn't her colleagues take her seriously? Was her analysis faulty? Did she struggle to get published? It seemed like it better explained the data at the time. That's what the last paragraph does. It explains why she wasn't persuasive at the time. It wasn't that her interpretation wasn't correct. It was that her interpretation did not provide an explanation for how those ingredients could result in heat we get from the sun. Nuclear fusion is introduced in that paragraph as a way to explain that the scientists then just didn't have the necessary knowledge to understand the process of how the sun produces energy.

Answer choice (A) is wrong because she didn't impact nuclear fusion theory. But answer choice (B) correctly describes its function in the passage: explaining the fellow scientist's reaction to Payne's analysis. It explains why they didn't take it more seriously, even though it better explained the data they had at the time.

Hope that helps!