Inertia-gravity waves cause characteristic stripy patterns

Not satisfied with OA:
Inertia-gravity waves cause characteristic stripy patterns in the clouds in the lower atmosphere but they are disregarded by conventional weather forecasts because they are thought to be too small to interact with larger systems such as warm and cold fronts.

A. they are disregarded by conventional weather forecasts because they are thought to be too small -- (both part in passive voice, waves is a strong contender of antecedent for they because of subject parallelism. )

B. they are disregarded by conventional weather forecasts because these waves are thought to be too small -- (both parts are in passive voice and second "they" is replaced by "these waves" and that leave not a slight ambiguity regarding antecedent. Therefore, B is best among all)


C. conventional weather forecasts disregard them because they think they are too small -- they and they referring to two different antecedent and leaves ambiguity.

D. conventional weather forecasts disregard these waves because they are thought to be too small -- (1) main clause + subordinate clause are in different voices (2) Parallel antecedent for they is forecasts not waves. Therefore, I think D is not right.

E. conventional weather forecasts think them too small -- wrong

Dear PiyushK,
I received your p.m. and I am happy to respond.

My friend, you are dissatisfied with the OA. I will "one up" that and say: I am rather dissatisfied with this question as a whole. This question is so bad that it's embarrassing. If I were going to give the question a letter grade, I would have to give it a D-. The phrase "stripy patterns" --- that sounds like middle-school writing! It's not clear to me that the person who wrote this question has any understanding of the high standards of the GMAT.

In (D), it's not necessarily a problem that a main clause is active and the subordinate clause is passive: that's not a deal-breaker in and of itself. Admittedly, the antecedent of "they" is not 100% clear --- I guess I would say, the antecedent is not automatically "weather forecasts," but the antecedent is not as crystal clear as it would be in the OA of an official or other high quality SC question.

I agree (A) is a good contender --- it keeps rhetorical focus on the waves, so that the same concept is the subject throughout the sentence. That profound unifying rhetorical effect, concurrent with a complete absence of pronoun-antecedent ambiguity, more than justifies the use of the passive voice. Arguably this is as good as, or better than, (D). If the question-writer intended this to be a wrong answer, that writer did not make anything about this choice unambiguously incorrect. On the real GMAT SC, right answers are unambiguously correct, and each wrong answer has at least one thing clearly and non-negotiably incorrect about it. It's extremely difficult to write a SC question to those lofty standards and still include wrong answers that sound convincing and tempting: many poorly written SC questions fall short of the mark, as this one has.

So, yes, (A) could be the best answer here. In the larger view, though, I don't know that it makes sense to expend too much energy arguing about a question of such low quality. After a certain point, detailed analysis of this question will not necessarily help us understand and answer high quality SC questions, which are quite different from this in a number of ways.

Here's a high quality GMAT SC practice question:
https://gmat.magoosh.com/questions/3604

Does all this make sense?
Mike

I think we should also take into account the fact that the main clause..inertia waves.. is in active voice..also the context is quite clear as the forecasts cannot interact with the fronts..Although I agree that it is parallel to the weather forecasts..and doesn't fit the unambiguous pronoun rule..Was the best pick if you reject the passive choices outright
I took A and B out coz Kevin had once told me that passive voice is never correct on the GMAT

Dear JusTLucK04,
I'm not sure what my respected colleague Kevin said, but it's far too dogmatic to say that the passive voice is "NEVER" correct on the GMAT. I would say: the passive voice is often incorrect. We certainly should be suspicious of the passive voice, because most often it is incorrect, and a few factors have to come together in order for it be acceptable on the GMAT. See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/active-vs- ... -the-gmat/
If you go into the GMAT with a dogmatic rule such as "passive is always wrong," then the GMAT will use your dogmatism against you. The GMAT loves to trap & punish folks who rely on one-size-fits-all sweeping generalizations.

Does this make sense?
Mike

Thanks Mike,

I got this question in daily practice set on workbook page, and I agree that this question is really a poor quality question.

Regarding active passive usage in subordinate clause, As per my experience I have seen many incorrect official answer choices in which answer choices were rejected because voice used in main clause and in subordinate clause were different. Specially with if.. than statement. Could you please help share your experience on this issue, because I use this check as thumb rule with every subordinate clause. If there are exceptions to such rule than I can keep them also in mind while analyzing answer choices. Thanks

Regards
Pk

A. they are disregarded by conventional weather forecasts because they are thought to be too small

Isn't it a parallelism issue? because of "they".

What is the problem that you think the first they leads to?

They cause XXX but are.

instead of but they are

Maybe the people who made this question wanted to avoid using the passive are disregarded.

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