A majority of the international journalists surveyed view nuclear powe

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-

Concepts tested here: Parallelism + Redundancy/Awkwardness

• Any elements linked by a conjunction ("but" and "or" in this sentence) must be parallel.

A: This answer choice fails to maintain parallelism between “view nuclear power stations as unsafe at present” and “that they will, or could, be made sufficiently safe in the future”; please remember that any elements linked by a conjunction (“but” in this sentence) must be parallel. Further, Option A fails to maintain parallelism between "will" and "could"; please remember, any elements linked by a conjunction ("or" in this sentence) must be parallel.

B: This answer choice fails to maintain parallelism between “view nuclear power stations as unsafe at present” and “that it would, or could be made sufficiently safe in the future”; please remember that any elements linked by a conjunction (“but” in this sentence) must be parallel. Further, Option B fails to maintain parallelism between "would" and "could be"; please remember, any elements linked by a conjunction ("or" in this sentence) must be parallel.

C: This answer choice fails to maintain parallelism between “view nuclear power stations as unsafe at present” and “they will be or could be made sufficiently safe in the future”; please remember that any elements linked by a conjunction (“but” in this sentence) must be parallel.

D: Correct. This answer choice maintains parallelism between “view nuclear power stations as unsafe at present” and “think that they will be or could be made sufficiently safe in the future”. Further, Option D maintains parallelism between "will be" and "could be".

E: Trap. This answer choice fails to maintain parallelism between "would" and "could be"; please remember, any elements linked by a conjunction ("or" in this sentence) must be parallel.

Hence, D is the best answer choice.

All the best!
Experts' Global Team

These type of questions really make it difficult to finalize concepts ....

A majority of the international journalists surveyed view nuclear power stations as unsafe at present but think that they will be or could be made sufficiently safe in the future.

In the above statement there are two nouns journalists and stations

The first subject ( journalists ) view .... and think ..... ( as stations don't think ) ....

It means that they will logical to think as "stations" .....
But still , they can be jouralists too ....

But another is another aspect to the above question.
We have to choose between D and E only.

A majority of the international journalists surveyed view nuclear power stations as unsafe at present but think the power stations would or could be made sufficiently safe in the future.

In E we have a serious problem in structure , because THAT is missing . A run on sentence infact.

Now between bad and worse, it the bad [D]

Please put forward you opinion regarding my analysis

I'm kind of confused why everyone is getting E. Why would you say 'would or could'? Could implies that it is possibe and would is generaly used to in an ureal or unlikely situation.

Ex. If I was there I would.

The beginning of the sentence says that the power stations are unsafe 'but'.

To me the logical following should be that they either will or can be safe. It doesnt make much sense to say they're not safe but the would be unless you add a reason why.

ex: They are not safe buy the would be if we introduce new safety measures.
NOT: They are not safe but they would and could be.

it should be D...because will shows that they feel that it will definately happen

would or could refers to past tense, so incorrect

This question tests parallelisim.

so, is the answer (d) ?
i dont think d is correct as in (D), they can either refer to power stations or to the jounalists.

please comment

Journalists are not something that can be made safe. Pronoun ambiguity arises when there is more than one logical referent for a pronoun, causing the sentence to have two different possible, logical meanings.

-Sarai

I would normally agree with that, but sometimes I feel unsure if that rule above can be generalized....

consider the following SC from OG12 (spoiler alert here...):

A proposal has been made to trim the horns from rhinoceroses ...; the question is whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see rhinoceroses after THEIR horns are trimed.

obviously journalists are not something that can be made safe, but isn't it quite obvious that humans don't have horns!??! so under your rule above, the THEIR should correctly and unambigously refer to rhinos? But OG12 says that THEIR could refer to the tourists as well.

the question is where I draw the line of possibile logical referent?

ack.

A proposal has been made to trim the horns from rhinoceroses to discourage poachers; the question is whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are trimmed.
(A) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses after their horns are
(B) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see one once their horns are
(C) whether tourists will continue to visit game parks to see rhinoceroses once the animals’ horns have been
(D) if tourists will continue to visit game parks and see rhinoceroses once the animals’ horns are
(E) if tourists will continue to visit game parks to see one after the animals’ horns have been

Hi Adalfu,

I don't have the OG12 in front of me at the moment, so I don't know what they wrote in the explanation, but while the problem is here, let's break it down.

You are absolutely right that there is no way to confuse people as the referent for "their". However, when an SC problem bothers to replace a pronoun with the actual noun, the result is a clearer sentence and there'll be preference for such an answer choice. Even when a pronoun is not ambiguous, the reader does have to do the work of finding the referent, and so a sentence is always a bit clearer when the noun is used instead of the pronoun.


There are three other major issues here though:

1) Tenses: We want to indicate that the trimming precedes the visiting; this is why 'has been' is needed-- the past has to be involved in the verb.

2) If vs. Whether: IF THE SENTENCE IS NOT A CONDITIONAL, DO NOT USE 'IF'.

3) Ellipses: In B, the word 'one' means 'one rhinoceros'. But the word 'rhinoceros' does not appear in the sentence. Only the plural, 'rhinoceroses', appears, and you cannot imply a word that never shows up!

Best,
Sarai

More on conditionals in SC Lesson 8 and practice with ellipses in SC Lesson 9 at gmaxonline!

26. A majority of the international journalists surveyed view nuclear power stations as unsafe at present but that they will, or could, be made sufficiently safe in the future.

(A) that they will, or could,
(B) that they would, or could,
(C) they will be or could
(D) think that they will be or could
(E) think the power stations would or could

Source: Brutal SC's

Again I am having same doubt , I had PM'ed 2-3 GMAT instructors long back but no one replied my luck

This was my query will be glad if someone explain this :

"This is regarding the pronoun antecedent rule . I have one query regarding that.

When we are 100% sure that a pronoun refer backs to a particular noun, I mean it depends on person to person how they interpret.

For example:

The city lights when turned on disturb many residents so they are turned off. (This is ambiguity that residents are turned off, or it is self understood that lights are turned off).
The city lights when turned on disturb many residents so they turn them off. (Who turn Whom off? or it is also self understood that residents turn city lights off).

Plz quote a thumb rule ."

Ambiguous pronouns is NOT a rule!
The only 2 pronoun rules (thumb if you will) are:
1. A pronoun must have a valid antecedent.
2. The pronoun must agree in number.

I had read a rule somewhere which said that :- "If the future is indicated from the point of view of the past, simple future is not used"

For example:- The man said that he would buy a car.

Now, coming to the question, if the sentence was like:-A majority of the international journalists surveyed viewed nuclear power stations as unsafe at present but think that the power station would, or could.

Would E be then correct?

GMATNinja, GMATNinjaTwo, MikeScarn, aragonn, generis, hazelnut

Hi,

Isn't "think" an uncertainty and for this reason can't we use "would"?

I don't think that rule is anything to worry about -- and I don't think it's correct. There's nothing wrong with this, for example:

"In the 1990s, many followers of the Pastafarian religion believed that the Flying Spaghetti Monster will beam its devotees to Pasta Heaven in the year 2063."

No problem, right? In the past, people held a certain belief -- about something that WILL happen (with certainty, in their view) in the future.

So I wouldn't worry about whatever rule you've come across -- verb tenses are mostly about logic and meaning, and once you get past the basics, there aren't a lot of iron-clad rules that are going to be useful. More on that in this video.

More importantly: GMAT questions are hard enough, so don't torture yourself by trying to figure out how GMAC would feel about altered answer choices. No SC answer choice exists in a bubble, and the GMAT will never present you with a single sentence and ask, "Hey, is this wrong or right?" The task is always to select the BEST sentence among the five options.

So as long as you understand why (D) is the best choice, you've done your job!



"Think" doesn't automatically imply uncertainty. For example:

• "Milena thinks that her father is a hairy buffoon who exists solely for her entertainment." -- It is absolutely a fact that Milena thinks (believes) this. We can debate whether the thing that she believes is true in reality (spoiler alert: it is), but the word "thinks" does not, by itself, express uncertainty.
• "I think about food for approximately 27 hours each day." -- Also a fact. (And yes, my appetite is so powerful that it can bend the laws of mathematics.)

So there's no reason why we couldn't use "think" with the conditional tense ("would"):

• "Milena thinks that her father would think about food for 27 hours a day if there were, in fact, 27 hours in a day."

I hope this helps!

Hi, I have one question They can refer to journalists or power stations. Do we always prefer tense correction over pronoun ambiguity ?

Hi AG95, you are right. The pronoun they is technically ambiguous, since they has two eligible antecedents: journalists or power stations.

In case of pronoun ambiguity, application of following rule often comes in handy:

Pronoun-subject in one clause can be presumed to refer to noun-subject of another clause.

The two clauses here are:

i) A majority of the international journalists surveyed view nuclear power stations as unsafe at present - a majority of the international journalistsis the noun-subject

ii) they will be or could be made sufficiently safe in the future - they is the pronoun-subject

So, they refers to a majority of the international journalists.

Having said that, it's worth noting that pronoun ambiguity should not be the only reason to eliminate an answer choice.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Pronoun ambiguity, its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.

GMATNinja here the usage of 'but' is more of a connector (and therefore should be followed by a verb) rather than as a ',+ FANBOYS' right, which is used to connect independent clause right?

Gagan