GMAT CLUB OLYMPICS: The National Institutes of Health, or the NIH, is

Hello, everyone. This sort of fill-in-the-blank question type was more common in the past, but regardless of how a question is pitched to us, we still need to focus on just what the passage lays out. What does this one have in store?

• Sentence one tells us what the NIH is doing: funding research... to help scientists identify the neural circuits involved in attention and selection.
• Sentence two zooms in, focusing on the researchers conducting the research—they are studying a phenomenon known as the "cocktail party effect."
• Sentence three provides information on certain psychiatric disorders that people may possess in which their ability to select what deserves attention and what does not is hampered.

Our goal is to determine what the NIH most likely believes in choosing to fund this line of research. As always, it is vital to keep both the question frame and the passage in mind when assessing the answer choices.


Remember, the researchers are interested in this phenomenon. It is possible that the NIH is not even aware of such a term. Besides, we cannot be expected to conclude that just because something has been researched (or even explained) before, the topic is unworthy of further study. This may be an easy answer to fall for if you have not practiced CR too much, but for the initiated, it should be apparent that there are too many logical gaps to fill.


There must be some reason that mice and owls were selected for the experiments, right? But would the NIH look at an experimental design and conclude that because mice and owls might possess the above abilities, the research was worth funding? It seems, again, as though the researchers selected these animals for some reason, and that the NIH is merely placing trust in the researchers. The word comparable is also suspect. It could be the case that one animal possesses better-than-human "cocktail party" abilities while the other may serve as nothing more than a control. We are not privy to information on the selection process. On first look, this answer choice can look promising. I might keep it in my first pass of the options. But the goal is always to choose the least debatable of the five answers presented, and I have my doubts about this one.


Now the focus is back on the NIH, just where it should be to answer the question at hand. The first line of the passage tells us outright that the NIH is funding research on mice and owls to help scientists identify the neural circuits involved in attention and selection. If these circuits or pathways were not detectable, then we would have no compelling reason to believe the NIH would be willing to foot the bill for such research. This looks like a better option than (B) above.


Although the soft language in may be should not go unnoticed, a cure is definite, like the "off" of a light switch. The goal may be to find a cure, and the NIH may very well hope that such a cure will be found through this research avenue, but does the passage allow us to point to a given line to justify this statement as our answer? We should not have to furnish an explanation for what could be true; we want to get behind an option that follows from the information provided. Again, I would not call this a terrible answer. It just does not quite add up.


All we know is that the passage indicates that the NIH is funding a certain type of research. We cannot speculate on why it would or would not choose to fund other types. Probably the easiest of the five answer choices to eliminate, in my view.

I hope that helps clear any confusion on this one. Enjoy the competition, everyone.

- Andrew