bagdbmba wrote:
And is it an Official Question ?
P.S: Any Other Verbal Experts in the Club - feel free to shed light. Thank you!
Hi bagdbmba,
I'd be happy to chime in here:
For easy reference, here's the question again:
His campaign for sanitary conditions in operating rooms finally successful, Sir Joseph Lister lent his name to the company that developed Listerine, the first antibacterial liquid.
(A) His campaign for sanitary conditions in operating rooms finally successful
(B) Since his campaign for sanitary conditions in operating rooms had been eventually successful
(C) Because of the eventual success of his campaigning for sanitary conditions in operating rooms
(D) His campaign for sanitary conditions in operating rooms being eventually successful
(E) Campaigning, eventually successfully, for conditions to be sanitary in operating rooms
User Response Data: A 23% B 33% C 22% D 14% E 7%The Source, and The Bigger GMAT PictureThis is a very odd question. Official GMAT questions are designed so that the right answer gets more votes than any other, there will be a runner-up option, and 3 lesser selected options. Here, there are TWO options either at par or even more selected than the right answer. That makes me a little skeptical that this is an official question (although I could not confirm a source, so we have to leave in the possibility that it’s official). At Beat the GMAT, it's cited as a Princeton Review question, but after Googling the question, I saw that GMAT Pill appears to be offering the question on its platform too. Very unclear.
Analysis:Now to the question: what is the author trying to convey? Sir Joseph Lister’s campaign for sanitary conditions in operating rooms was finally successful (implying a challenge). At which point, he lent his name to the company that developed Listerine.
Options A, B, and C, received about 80% of the vote, so our discussion needs to center on options A, B, and C.
In the original sentence, check out this clause that appears before the comma. Notice that it serves as a modifier. With modifiers, we can use something we call the What Is/Who is? test. Whose campaign was finally successful? What does that clause modify? Sir Joseph Lister. That modifier is correct. It was Joseph Lister’s campaign.
When we’re dealing with modifiers, chucking the filler provides amazing clarity, especially with awkward sentences like this.
Dump the filler: His campaign successful, Joseph Lister lent his name. Totally fine. Although the original sentence sounds AWFUL to the ears and looks HORRENDOUS to the eyes, it’s amazing how the filler can contort things to make the good sound bad. The option is just fine.Now to B (which is the most selected option):Since – Since slightly alters the author’s intentions. “Since” implies that lending his name was dependent on the condition of campaign success. However, the author is saying that Lister lent his name after that event happened more as a matter of circumstance than a matter of some sort of mandate or condition.
Had Been – There is ZERO reason to use past-perfect here. Past-perfect refers to the first of two events that CONCLUDED in the past. The campaigns success, and the lending of the name are both ongoing or events (or at best the temporal relationship is too unclear to assign past-perfect since the original option doesn’t indicate that we’re referring to two events that concluded in the past).
Let’s wrap up with options D and E:D) The GMAT frowns on a gratuitous mid-clausal BEING verb. It would be a thunderclap of an event for a mid-clause BEING to be correct on the GMAT. Note that BEING is just fine in official questions if used as a connector (at the beginning of a sentence, or after a comma). This BEING in D has no business being here. Dump D fast.
E) Is a calamity. It’s choppy, it’s awkward, and it’s what we like to call a Jumbler. You’ll see these on your GMAT: jumbled throw away answers that appear almost as though the test-writers just needed to full an option. _________________
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