12 Days of Christmas GMAT Competition - Day 2: Scurvy is a disease cau

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

Wow, what an excellent way to kick off the competition yesterday. I thought the question would prove somewhat difficult, but I had no idea that, as of this writing 24 hours after the fact, answer accuracy would stand at just 19 percent. Apparently, the Deccan Traps lived up to their name as a Sentence Correction topic.

Before we get into this question, some fun facts:

• I created the question upon reading about the real-life 1536 expedition of Jacques Cartier to what was then called the New World.
• Donnacona is the name of the chief of the Iroquois nation at that time.
• The information about vitamin C recommendations is also based in historical fact.

All right, after such a lengthy and proper introduction, how about we break down this question and passage? I prefer to take a peek at the question before engaging with the passage so that I know how to frame the information, but this is a matter of personal preference, not a guiding principle.


This question is pretty generic, in all honesty, in the sense that its broad applicability could point us in any of a number of directions regarding the information in the passage. It is just this sort of question that dissuades me from pre-thinking at times, since the answers themselves will have to provide a framework for assessment.


- Sentence one provides background information about scurvy, both what causes it and what it causes under certain conditions.

- Sentence two tells us about an ill-fated expedition in which sailors began to develop scurvy.

- Sentence three is as simple a sentence as can be: many sailors started to die.

- Sentence four introduces a different group of people, Donnacona natives, and informs us that a spruce nettle tea they brought with them cured the scurvy-stricken sailors of the disease.

- Sentence five then shifts to two centuries later and provides further information on the connection between vitamin C and scurvy.

It is against this backdrop that we need to compare the answers. I leave my mental mapping simple to encourage further referencing of the passage, since a crucial CR skill is to stick to exactly what the passage lays out.


The definitive language used in a conditional here is unwarranted, as the supposed outcome is purely hypothetical. We have to stick with the facts of the passage. Simply put, sailors drank the tea and recovered from scurvy. The keyword water-based does match up well with water-soluble vitamin C from the opening line, but this answer focuses on the vehicle for a remedy rather than on the contents: water alone is not said in the passage to treat vitamin C deficiency. Some inherent quality of spruce nettles must exist instead.


If this were untrue, then based on the information in the passage, there is no way that a tea made exclusively from spruce nettles could have led to the recovery of the sailors afflicted with scurvy. To piggyback off of the previous answer, we can speculate that spruce nettles themselves may have bound water inside, that perhaps chewing the nettles or soaking them in water releases their contents to make them more bioavailable. Although such a consideration is not necessary to answer this question, it may help you to steer clear of a trap answer such as (A). In short, there is nothing to argue against here, and that is why we should choose it. Remember Occam's razor (boiled down—sorry, I like puns): the simplest explanation is usually correct.


This answer runs in the same vein as (A), and it is incorrect for the same reason. We cannot say for certain what would have happened, since we only know what did happen, even if the question stem asks us to infer. Again, do not overlook the obvious. Although the passage states that the sailors afflicted with scurvy recovered upon ingesting the tea, it also informs us that the expedition was put on pause, more or less, because the ships were stuck in frozen water. Many sailors could have died from the harsh winter conditions before scurvy had a chance to finish them off. We simply do not know.


A play on the final line of the passage, as well as the overarching topic, but be careful: just because somebody provides a remedy does not mean that the healer understands exactly what causes that remedy to heal someone else. If we all had to understand organic chemistry and biochemistry, in addition to other disciplines, whenever we sought relief from some bodily affliction, then we would all be in a lot of trouble. If anything, this answer choice should make you feel better about choosing the unassuming (B).


As we saw in (D), this answer springs from a connection drawn between the last line and the passage as a whole, but the inference is just as invalid. The final line does not establish that vitamin C is only found in citrus. Besides, since when does a recommendation mean that the information surrounding that advice is factual? (Think of a bad recommendation you have gotten at some point in your life—e.g., it will be fun to throw rocks at that hornets' nest.) Finally, if we feel ready to commit to such a link, then all signs should point to (B) as the correct answer instead. Evidently, spruce must contain vitamin C.

I hope that helps clear up any confusion. It was a fun question to tinker with, mixing fact and fiction (in those nonsensical proper nouns the GMAT™ often likes to use) and incorporating my interests in history, medicine, and, of course, logic games.

Let the competition roll on!

- Andrew