KaranB1 wrote:
@martytatgettestprepmurty @varitaskarishma
egmat GMATNinjacan u please tell me why option choice B is not better off e
Before jumping into the answer choices, let's take another look at the key pieces of the passage and the question stem.
The environmental scientists concludes that:
Quote:
the current amount of government funding for the preservation of wetlands is inadequate and should be augmented.
S/he reaches this conclusion
despite the following evidence:
- "Over the past ten years, there has been a sixfold increase in government funding for the preservation of wetlands while the total area of wetlands needing such preservation has increased only twofold."
- "Even when inflation is taken into account, the amount of funding now is at least three times what it was ten years ago."
So, despite the fact that funding has at least tripled in the last ten years while the area of wetlands needing protection has only doubled, the scientist concludes that the government funding "is inadequate and should be augmented."
Our task is to the answer choice that, "if true,
most helps to reconcile the environmental scientist's conclusion with the evidence cited above."
Let's take a look at (E) first:
Quote:
(E) Unlike today, funding for the preservation of wetlands was almost nonexistent ten years ago.
This reconciles the scientist's conclusion with the evidence nicely, because the evidence sets up a comparison between the growth of funding (at least tripled) and the growth of protected land (only twofold) in the past ten years. Tripling an "almost nonexistent" amount of funding could easily mean that the funding is still inadequate, even if the protected land area has increased at a lower rate than has the amount of funding. (E) is looking good.
Quote:
(B) Over the past ten years, the salaries of scientists employed by the government to work on the preservation of wetlands have increased at a rate higher than the inflation rate.
This statement provides one potential reason to validate increased government funding, but does it truly reconcile the evidence and the conclusion? The statement simply does not provide enough information to answer that question. For example, funding for the wetlands has already increased at a rate higher than the inflation rate -- does this gap account for the increase in scientists' salaries, or is the increase in funding still inadequate? We do not have enough information to know one way or the other.
The question stem asks us which answer choice "
most helps to reconcile the environmental scientist's conclusion with the evidence." (B) may be tempting, but as it does not clearly reconcile the conclusion with the evidence, we can eliminate it.
(E) is the correct answer.
I hope that helps!
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