The English physician Edward Jenner found that if experimental subject

Hello krndatta,

We hope this finds you well.

Having gone through the question and your query, we believe we can resolve your doubt.

The use of "causing" slightly alters the meaning of the sentence, due to the use of the "comma + present participle ("verb+ing" - "causing" in this case)" construction; please remember, the introduction of the present participle ("verb+ing"- “causing” in this case) after comma generally leads to a cause-effect relationship.

The intended core meaning is that if experimental subjects were deliberately infected with cowpox, they would become immune to smallpox, and as extra information, it is also mentioned that cowpox causes only a mild illness.

The use of the "comma + present participle", however, implies that if experimental subjects were deliberately infected with cowpox, and doing so caused only a mild illness, they would become immune to smallpox.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

Hello waytowharton,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, in Option D, the phrase "causing only a mild illness" follows the "Comma + Present Participle ("verb+ing" - "causing" in this sentence)" construction, so it modifies not the preceding noun, but the entire preceding clause, typically conveying a cause-effect meaning.

Thus, even if we take it as extra information, this phrase changes the sentence's intended meaning.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

The sentence is talking about some research or experimentation that happened in the past -- and the cowpox mentioned in the sentence is the specific cowpox that was injected in subjects during that experimentation in the past. And when did that specific cowpox cause mild illness in those subjects? In the past. So the past tense ("caused") is completely reasonable here.

Unfortunately there aren't any clear-cut "rules" for this sort of thing. You just have to do your best to think about meaning and decide whether the meaning is logical -- if you aren't sure, look for other decision points.

For more on verb tenses, check out this old video or this newer one.

I hope that helps!

In C and D, is "causing" a problem? Since the subject of the main sentence should be responsible for "comma+ing", "subjects were.., causing..." implies that instead of "cowpox", "subjects" should be responsible for the action of "causing", and thus the intended meaning is altered.

Could someone please help explain?

Dear experts,

In option E and also as per OA, cowpox causes mild illness. But isn't mild illness the result of getting infected by cowpox?
Can someone please explain?

Regards,
Arup

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Request Expert Reply:
Hello Experts,
MartyTargetTestPrep, GMATNinja, GMATGuruNY, AjiteshArun, AndrewN
How do we know that 'the mild illness' has been occurred in the past (caused)? I mean: Why not it is 'causes'?
Thanks in Advance..

Respected moderators
I have a different doubt in this , According to OG explanation an issue with using 'ing' modifier in option B and D has been pointed out . To quote
"The participle causing suggests that infecting subjects with cowpox caused a mild illness only in some of the cases - but this is not intended"

I am not able to understand the issue with using -ing modifier as it is a case where a participial modifier comes in the middle of sentence separated by commas, it should modify the noun ahead of it and it does so just fine

Looking forward to your help

PS - i have understood the other decision point and solved the problem correctly. It is just this point in OG ans key that is hurting me[/quote]


Dear Experts,

I am facing the same issue. Can you please clear the concern?

Thanks in advance.

So we can use if and would together in a conditional statement?

I have a hardcopy of your book, can you please tell me the page numbers?

Thanks for trusting our book, for your GMAT Prep.

Conditional Constructs are covered in Chapter 7 (Tense and Subjunctive) in the sub-section titled "Conditional Constructs".

Interesting question!

I'd say either tense is fine. You could write that cowpox causes a mild illness, in general. And you could also write that when certain people were infected with cowpox, the infection caused a mild illness, since the infections occurred in the past.

The upshot: if either construction could be justified, move on the other decision points! Fortunately, there are four nice concrete errors in this one, so there's no reason to agonize over the present vs. past tense decision.

I hope that clears things up!

if experimental subjects were deliberately infected with cowpox... here the verb is not in simple past tense. So how can we deduce to use If..Then here?

Hello AbhiR3,

We hope this finds you well.

To resolve your query, we would like to point out that "were...infected" is indeed a simple past tense verb.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

EducationAisle
Can you throw some light on options B and D.
Why is ,causing wrong here?
Not able to understand the solutions above.

Thanks

KarishmaB MartyTargetTestPrep and other experts

In option D, Can't we consider, "causing only a mild illness" in between 2 commas and as a non-essential modifier modifying cowpox? In such a case the error that it modifies preceding clause will not hold true. What is the flaw in my undertstanding?

Hi,

I rejected the choice E because it uses "which caused" which I thought is incorrect because Cowpox causes mild illness should be the correct as it is stating a fact and general information here, hence, shouldn't it be using present tense to state facts or general information which is always true. In that sense, how is the use of past tense correct here? Also, if the use of past tense is correct, then in what all scenarios is the use of past tense is correct for facts or general information?

Thanks

The English physician Edward Jenner found that if experimental subjects were deliberately infected with cowpox, which caused only a mild illness, they are immune from smallpox.

(A) which caused only a mild illness, they are immune from
(B) causing only a mild illness, they become immune from
(C) which causes only a mild illness, they are immune to
(D) causing only a mild illness, they became immune from
(E) which caused only a mild illness, they would become immune to

If are, then will
if were, then would. Select E