Pt 58, S2, Q15 - Almost all advances in genetic research

[cindyqtran]

Can you help me with the first LR section #15? Thanks!

I was debating between B and C.

[dan]

Sure. Here's what we have in the passage:

Almost all advances in genetic research lead to ethical dilemmas.
Most (more than half) of genetic research is funded exclusively by government.
The rest (less than half) of genetic research is funded exclusively by corporations.

This is an inference question (which must be true?), so we want to find an answer that we can basically prove.

(A) The government funds more genetic research than corporations do, but this doesn't necessarily mean that the government-funded research projects lead to more advances. We can imagine a scenario where we have 2 projects funded by government and 1 project funded by corporations. Maybe the 1 corporate-funded project accounts for all the advances.

(B) Again, we don't know that any of the government-funded projects lead to any advances. Maybe all the government-funded projects were bad projects.

(C) Again, same issue, just flip-flopped. We don't know that any advances come from corporate-funded projects either. Maybe all the advances come from government projects.

(D) This must be true, so this is the correct answer. We know that ALL genetic research is funded either by government or by corporations, so it would be impossible to have advances in genetic research, and the ethical dilemmas that result, without government or corporate funding.

(E) Has the same issue as (A), (B), and (C). We don't know that government-funded research necessarily leads to advances, so we can't necessarily say that government-funded research will continue to lead to ethical dilemmas.

Hope that helps.

dan