Although jogging is known to cause knee injury, it can be avoided if

please, explain more, why b is wrong ? thank you

I was able to understand your explanation. But am still skeptical about it. I am of the opinion that the pronoun 'it' logically refers to 'surgery' and hence usage of 'it' in option A is not ambiguous. It would not make sense for 'it' to refer to 'jogging' in option A.

Ex: Injury caused by jogging is serious, hence it should not be practiced.

Even though 'Injury' is the subject here, I believe 'it' can logically refer only to 'jogging' and not to 'injury'. So can you please elaborate on your explanation.

If we wear right pair of jogging shoes, we may avoid knee injury, but not the fact.The fact that jogging is known to cause knee injury remains a fact irrespective of whether we wear right jogging shoes or we don't.

What can be avoided - knee injury or fact ? .. knee injury, not fact..... isn't it?

Therefore choice B is wrong since it states that the fact can be avoided.

As I understand a correct sentence must be able to convey the intended meaning without any dependence on the reader's knowledge of the real world. Let us take the practically absurd fact - jogging may be avoided if the right pair of jogging shoes are worn. Someone who does not know about jogging shoes may guess that if one used jogging shoes, one would not need to jog - only wearing the shoes would serve the purpose of being healthy. Only because you know that this fact is absurd and not logical, you can decipher that the pronoun it should logically refer to injury, not jogging. Nonetheless a correct sentence is independent of user's interpretation, however foolish the interpretation may sound practically. Let us consider another statement:

A proton has positive charge and an electron has negative charge; hence a negatively charged particle would be repelled by it.

If you use your real life knowledge that particles of similar charge repel each other, the logical antecedent of the pronoun it must be electron. However the sentence by itself does not convey the meaning; it depends on your knowledge of real world. You cannot say that the pronoun it is unambiguous because it is illogical that particles of opposite charge would repel each other.

Compare with the previous statement:
absurd fact: ...jogging may be avoided if the right pair of jogging shoes are used.
absurd fact: ...a negatively charged particle would be repelled by proton.

In either case one cannot eliminate the possibility of the absurd case, unless he/she uses his/her knowledge of real life.

Do you see my point?

Thanks sayantanc2k. I like your explanation now. But, I wanted to confirm one more aspect here. The above stated explanation is applicable only when the pronoun is the subject of a clause and the pronoun refers to a subject of another clause right?

Consider this example taken from gmatprep and let me know if my understanding is correct:
Sulfur dioxide, a major contributor to acid rain, is an especially serious pollutant because it diminishes the respiratory system's ability to deal with all other pollutants.

Here the usage of 'it' is not ambiguous for two reasons:
1. Logically it is absurd for 'it' to refer to acid rain. - As stated by an expert from Manhattan GMAT.
2. 'acid rain' is in the modifying clause. - This is my interpretation after looking at your explanation.

Now, if we modify this question to: "Although acid rain is caused by sulfur di oxide, it is a serious pollutant", then the usage of 'it' is ambiguous because 'acid rain' is the subject of the dependent clause and 'it' in the independent clause can refer to 'acid rain' even though it is absurd to treat acid rain as a pollutant. Am I right?

I would really be happy to see an official example from og or gmat prep, illustrating your explanation.

mikemcgarry / daagh can you please confirm the validity of the explanation given by sayantanc2k. Although its an expert's post, I want to hear the opinion of a test instructor too.

Hi Vyshak,

I have gone through two three posts above..

1) My first point would be-- In A 'it' is the subject in MAIN clause, and Jogging is the subject in subordinate clause and GRammatically, 'jogging' can take 'it' , so 'IT' refers incorrectly to JOGGING unambiguously..

2) the sentence are to be checked more on GRAMMATICAL aspect than LOGICAL..

3) Logical point would have come into play-- when there was something apart from jogging, something that would not take 'it' as a pronoun..
EXAMPLE--
Although Athletes are prone to knee injury, it can be avoided....
here logically IT cannot refer to Athletes, so it should refer to injury..

Now about this Q, I was slightly reluctant to get into the discussion as I felt C does not convey the meaning of the ORIGINAL sentence, it is just not sounding CORRECT..

The meaning of Original is to talk of CONTRAST, but C has made it into a very simple sentence..
YES, I will go with C but with some apprehensions..

Vyshak
Hi
There is a question from 1000 SC series, upon which the current question may have been built; But what is illuminating about this is Ron’s elucidation on the pronoun ambiguity.

Although aspirin irritates the stomach, it can be avoided if the aspirin tablet is given a coating that will not dissolve until the tablet reaches the intestine.

(A) Although aspirin irritates the stomach, it
(B) The irritation of the stomach caused by aspirin
(C) The fact that aspirin causes irritation of the stomach
(D) Aspirin causes stomach irritation, although it
(E) Aspirin irritates the stomach, which

The OA is B;

Now Ron’s reply:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/foru ... t1350.html
Pronouns such as 'it' most commonly point to the SUBJECT of the preceding clause; you can think of this as a special case of 'parallelism' if that helps.

Looking at choice D, then:

Best-case scenario: The pronoun is ambiguous, referring to either 'aspirin' or 'stomach irritation'. Still wrong.
Worst-case scenario: The pronoun can be taken to refer to 'aspirin', the subject of the preceding part. Then the sentence becomes ridiculous ('aspirin can be avoided if you do this, and then that, to the aspirin tablet').

Although choice B is a bit wordy, it gets rid of the pronoun issue completely, and it has the correct subject ('irritation... can be avoided').


The reason why we have to stay clear of choices A and D in the jogging and aspirin cases is not that they are confirmed cases of ambiguity. Even if there is an iota of doubt about some ambiguity, we must look for a choice that avoids that ambiguity altogether. If there is none, then perhaps we may settle to choose the logical antecedent. Therefore, per se, it is difficult to say in the acid rain case, whether it is the right choice or not, given that we have no other choices to compare.

However, B in the Aspirin case and C in the jogging case are perhaps the best of the lot because they are ambiguity free.

Thanks for your detailed responses sayantanc2k, chetan2u and daagh. My doubts are clarified now.

I would be more pleased to see option like "possible" before "injury" in C

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