Any medical test will sometimes fail to detect a condition when it is present and indicate that there is one when it is not. (A) a condition when it is present and indicate that there is one (B) when a condition is present and indicate that there is one (C) a condition when it is present and indicate that it is present (D) when a condition is present and indicate its presence (E) the presence of a condition when it is there and indicate its presence https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/24/science/the-doctor-s-world-james-fixx-the-enigma-of-heart-disease.html The advanced equipment needed to screen for heart disease in symptomless individuals is very expensive. Moreover, all medical tests sometimes fail to detect a condition when it is present and indicate it is there when it is not . The percentage of such so-called false negatives and false positives varies with each test. For those and other reasons, most doctors are not inclined to advise use of currently available technology to mass screen for heart disease.

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Any medical test will sometimes fail to detect a condition when it is

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egmat

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rabjeet

Hi Experts! I had a doubt. egmat

Can we eliminate A,B and E by considering that the ellipsis implied here is ambiguous?
Considering the presence of there to have an ambiguous effect on the sentence.

.... when it (condition) is not present
.... when it (condition) is not there

Hey rabjeet

Thank you for the question.

As ExpertsGlobal5 has rightly explained above, we can't really call this a case of ambiguity in the use of ellipsis. These choices merely swap "present" with "there".

Even in choice E, the omitted word appears is 'there', since we find the word "presence" but not "present".

This question is a fine example of a test of Pronoun Ambiguity and Pronoun Consistency. Choices A and B test pronoun consistency, as we have two different pronouns "it" and "one" referring to the same noun "condition". On the other hand, choices D and E test pronoun ambiguity, as the pronoun "it" has multiple possible antecedents in each choice.

I hope this answers your question.

Happy Learning!

Abhishek

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egmat

Hey ExpertsGlobal5

There are some glaring errors in this solution you've provided (highlighted in red above). Could you please check?

Regards,

Abhishek

Hello egmat,

We hope this finds you well.

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention; this post is to inform you and others on this thread that we have duly edited our explanation to correct these errors.

We apologize for the confusion.

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MartyTargetTestPrep AndrewN egmat I eliminated options a) b) and e) on the basis of there. Since there(generally) refers to a physical place. Is this reasoning correct? if no then please tell me how to approach this. If yes then can you please explain in detail how d) is incorrect and c) is correct

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NakulDiwakar10

You run the risk, NakulDiwakar10, of misinterpreting the role of a word by ignoring the larger context. You should not be looking at there as an isolated word; rather, it is used in answer choices (A) and (B) as a part of the expression there is/there are. (The word does, in fact, refer to a location in answer choice (E).) You will notice under the spoiler in the original post that the New York Times article that served as the source material for the sentence used there, so such usage is not incorrect. If you have read through the posts above and still cannot figure out why answer choice (D) is incorrect, then feel free to ask further about it. I will say, however, that if you are asking questions like the above about 700-level questions, you should probably be looking at low- to mid-level questions first and saving the more nuanced material for later. That is, if you do not possess a strong fundamental understanding of the issues that are tested, then you will probably not see any questions like this one on your test. You want to work up to these questions by mastering those that may test similar concepts in a more obvious way.

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