swikrityC wrote:
Hi
GMATNinja,
Can you please help me with this question?
Look forward.
First, bear in mind that a pronoun functions as a stand-in for the entire noun phrase it refers to. For example:
Because Tim had heard an urban legend that Taco Bell tacos are made with horse meat, he decided to make them at home instead, using his own recipe, which called for hamster meat.
Here "them" refers to "Taco Bell tacos." But this doesn't make sense. Tim isn't making
Taco Bell tacos - he's making his own. Put another way, if we include the modifier "Taco Bell," when we consider what the pronoun is standing in for, we get an illogical meaning.
We see the same problem here with (A), (B), and (C). As others have noted, for these three answer choices, the "it" in the second clause seems to refer back to "a synthetic growth hormone." If we substitute "a synthetic growth hormone" into the second clause, we get some variation of the following:
"...remove a synthetic growth hormone painstakingly in small amounts from the pituitary glands of human cadavers..."
Synthetic growth hormone is, by definition, synthesized in a lab. What on earth is it doing in human cadavers? Were the scientists performing twisted experiments on these cadavers, injecting them with lab-made hormones to see what would happen? Alas, contrary to popular belief, H.P. Lovecraft was not a GMAT question-writer, so (A), (B), and (C) are out.
Next we get some seriously low-hanging fruit in (E): "
learning how to synthesize the growth hormone,
it..." "It" is learning how to synthesize? What could "it" even refer to here? The growth hormone? Clearly, it should be the
scientists doing the learning. So (E) is out and (D) is the only one left standing.
I hope that helps!
Can you please explain what 'it' is referring to in Option D. To me, It seems it is also referring to Growth hormone.