GMAT CLUB OLYMPICS: In 1990, botanical conservationists were sent to

Hello, GMAT Club-bers and mental athletes. Who does not love a good paradox, the chance to play Sherlock Holmes and get to the bottom of a mystery? The question tells us exactly what to expect: a failed project must have been evaluated at a later time and thought of differently. All we need to do is deduce why.

• Sentence one outlines the goal of the project: to save a declining population of a rare flowering shrub. We get further background information. (We can always consult the passage again for details.)
• Sentence two provides information on both the shrub and the experimental design—in short, ensure sustainability in a small plot of forest and then expand the plot.
• Sentence three informs us that 10 years after the project was launched, it was abandoned, and that the original 5-acre plot was never expanded.
• Sentence four paints a much rosier picture of the project and the sustainability of the shrub from the perspective of a decade later, around 2010.

What do we need to know to put the pieces together?


This is the sort of answer I would chase when I started looking at CR questions. The problem is that nothing indicates that the pollinator was not present before the early 2000s. Researchers (or humans in general) simply did not know of its existence until a later time.


The timeline and the supporting details add up perfectly here. We are to understand that throughout the duration of the experiment, the forest was being chiseled away (pardon the mixed metaphor), so the lack of expansion of the original 5-acre plot makes sense. Also, if the land was left untouched after the 1990s, or, in other words, during the 2000s, then the forest would have had time to take over again. Finally, the passage tells us in line two that the shrub can survive only in environments in which it is the predominant plant. If one plot was protected while the surrounding forest was cut down to some extent, then the chances for repopulation of the endangered shrub, post-1990s, would increase. This looks like a great answer.


Another strong trap answer, this one even incorporates a qualifier that is commonly used in correct answers to CR questions: significantly. But we cannot blindly follow language. In this case, the surviving shrubs is vague and could refer to just two shrubs. Even if those two shrubs looked perfect, better than fifty shrubs had looked in 1990 (by whatever metric employed), we cannot say that this is likely the reason that the project was later considered a success without further contextual information. Conservation is the goal, not prettier or more robust shrubs. Of course, we cannot argue with the given statement at the end of the passage that the project was hailed a success, so there were probably more than two shrubs, but I hope you get the point I am aiming to make. Unqualified language can often prove misleading.


Perhaps this bonus effect could help explain why the project was later considered more successful, but do not lose sight of the focus of the project itself: saving a declining population of a rare flowering shrub. Animals and shrubs are not one and the same. We are interested in reconciling information on the latter, and as awful as it sounds, we are not interested in these animal species.


Like (D) above, the wool gets pulled over our eyes here and has us focus on a distraction—pharmaceuticals and drugs—but neither one has anything to do with the original project. We are told at the end of the passage that the shrub was no longer seen as a threatened species in the area. The paradox hinges on the shrub and its conservation, nothing else (even if the compound in question was derived from the shrub).

Based on what I have seen in tougher official questions, (A) and (C) read like good trap answers, while (B) is completely unassuming, relying on the test-taker to comb through the details of the passage to arrive at that eureka moment.

As always, I hope my analysis may prove useful to the community, and good luck with your studies.

- Andrew