#25 - Global Reference, Must Be True, Organization

[mollyquillin]

Hi there PS,

I had a question about #25 on this passage. I chose B because I misinterpreted the explanation of the first theory in the text as "evidence in support of that theory," as answer choice B states. I know that B is incorrect, but how is C correct? I don't understand how the new theory could be a "description of an obstacle to the theory's general acceptance," as answer choice C states. If the theory itself is not the obstacle, what is the obstacle to acceptance?

Looking back at the answer choices, I probably could have gotten this right by process of elimination if I had only looked at the last sentence of each of answer choice - the last sentence of C is the only choice that even comes close to stating the passage's structure, in my opinion.

Thanks in advance for the help with questions!
Molly

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Molly,

You're right that one of the clearest reasons to reject answer choice B is the final portion: there is no "discussion of an experiment" at the end of the passage.

Answer choice C's initial phrase "explanation of a theory" is actually talking about the explanation of neurotransmitter theory that you get in lines 9-19. It skips right past the "leaping electrical impulses" theory, which is a small weakness in the answer but not enough to make it wrong, per se. The answer is just less complete than it could be, something you sometimes find in Organization questions!

The "description of an obstacle to the theory's general acceptance" is paragraph 2, where scientists "had trouble imagining how the binding of a chemical to a receptor at the cell surface could influence the flow of ions through the cell membrane."

The "presentation of an explanation that helps the theory overcome the obstacle" is the end of paragraph 2 and all of paragraph 3, talking about the more complex structure of receptors that scientists discovered.

The "discussion of a further implication of the theory" is the discussion of medical implications in lines 50-60.

Long story short: don't assume the description in the answer has to necessarily jump right in on line 1 of the passage. I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[gavelgirl]

Hi Powerscore,

I noticed answer choice E has 5 descriptions when there are only 4 paragraphs. Is that a good reason to eliminate it immediately for these question types or no? I had chosen E and I know it's incorrect now but when I was looking through the answer choices I thought it was strange that it had 5 descriptions.

Please reply Thank you have a good day

[Jeremy Press]

Hi gavelgirl,

That's a very good question, and I'm glad you asked it! That by itself is not enough to reject answer choice E. In many cases in organization questions, the number of descriptive phrases in the answer will match the number of paragraphs in the passage. But that's not always true, and you can't rely on that alone as a reason to reject an answer. Especially on recent tests, the writers of the test have gotten a little more tricky with describing certain paragraphs with more than one descriptive phrase. Long story short, that method likely worked a little better (though not perfectly) on older tests, but it definitely won't work (and might cause you to miss a question) on recent tests.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[afulbright.2000@gmail.com]

Can someone please explain a little further in-depth why E) is wrong?

Is it because "new information that challenges the theory" doesn't accurately reflect what is stated in the passage? Technically, the new information in the passage is what added to the explanation of the theory instead of challenging it- hence why C)'s verbiage of " presentation of an explanation that helps the theory overcome the obstacle" is the better fit?

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

The first problem I see with answer E, afulbright.2000@gmail.com, is where it says "description of how the theory came to win scientific acceptance." The author told us that it has come to be widely accepted, but never told us how it got to that point. Instead, the next thing we heard was the problem with the theory, which was that scientists didn't understand the mechanism and some were therefore skeptical. At that point, answer E has already gone wrong, and an answer that is part wrong is all wrong!

But wait, there's more!

The next thing E says is "presentation of new information that challenges the theory," and there is no such information in the passage. Yes, we were told that there was skepticism due to a lack of understanding, but that isn't information that challenges the theory, like some positive evidence that it is wrong.

And finally, there really wasn't any "modification of the theory to accommodate the new information," firstly because there WAS no new information to accommodate, and secondly because the theory wasn't actually modified. Instead, there was research that further supported the theory. They didn't change the theory; they added evidence to help explain the theory.

So you see, answer E goes wrong several times over! Every piece of a good Structure answer needs to be accurate in describing what happened, and it needs to do it all in the right order. E fails because it's not accurate.

[boehmejayne@gmail.com]

Thank you, Adam for presenting so many ways in which E was wrong. I got caught up in trying to match an answer to the first part of the reading that I did not focus well enough on the other aspects of the reading within the various answers. It's funny, I had C chosen, then didn't see the obstacle as being an actual obstacle. I was just thinking that it was just part of the given process and in my mind did not label it as such. But upon reflection, of course the theory went up against an obstacle in that the process was not understood (my paraphrase) and some scientists remained "skeptical" of it. Then they were able to provide better explanations of how it worked. Thus, here is an example of focusing in too much on one particular aspect of the structure.

[Robert Carroll]

boehmejayne,

It's a very common situation that the correct answer will have something you're uncomfortable with. Now, the correct answer can't ever contain something that makes it wrong, but it may contain a statement that intuitively is unappealing. But, as in this case, every other answer has serious problems! So even if we don't recognize that answer choice (C) is all correct, the other answers have such fatal issues that they really shouldn't be appealing.

Robert Carroll