The spraying of pesticides can be carefully planned, but accidents,

Official Explanation

Parallelism; Rhetorical construction

The only plural nouns that could potentially be the referent of they in this sentence are weather conditions and pilot errors. However, neither of these makes logical sense within the context of the sentence.

For the purposes of this sentence, it is clearer to use the impersonal than anticipated rather than than they had anticipated. This is because it is not important who is anticipating the conditions under which the pesticides are sprayed. In other words, the statement is universal; the point is that these are unknowable conditions, rather than that some particular group failed to anticipate correctly the size of spray deposits.

A. As indicated above, there is no reasonable referent for the pronoun they.

B. Correct. The idea is conveyed clearly and cleanly.

C. They has no reasonable referent.

D. Weather conditions that are not foreseeable is an awkward construction. Either unforeseeable weather conditions or weather conditions that cannot be foreseen would be preferable.

E. They has no reasonable referent.

The correct answer is B.

I think the answer is B.
There are two main issues, parallelism and pronoun reference.

Pronoun error - The last item in the list says "and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than they had". "They" does not have an antecedent and is wrong. It is supposed to refer to pilots but pilot itself is not a subject, only "pilot errors". Eliminate A, C, and E.

Parallelism error - Between B and D. "weather conditions that cannot be foreseen" is correct over "not forseeable".

I'm not sure why B is preferred. I know "parallelism" was cited, but what makes B correctly parallel and D not parallel (i.e., what is the subordinate clause "that..." have to be parallel with?)?

can be carefully planned .... can not be forseen is present in B , hope that makes clear to you

I second you daagh. I even selected B over D, but came here in search of appropriate reason, which looks like I have found here.

First up, please underline the portion of the sentence so that it's easier to read in the GMAT format. I felt I got it wrong, because it was so confusing to see which part at the end of the setence was part of the original sentence (than they had or just than?)

The spraying of pesticides can be carefully planned, but accidents, weather conditions that could not be foreseen, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than they had anticipated.

(B) weather conditions that cannot be foreseen, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than
(E) unforeseeable weather conditions, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than they had

In E, who does the last "they" represent? There is no clear antecedant. But we now know GMAT doesn't care much about antecedents of pronouns. So, there must be another reason.
Let's simplify the sentence:
X can be planned, but A, B and C often cause larger deposits than THEY had anticipated. (Does it make sense?? Of course not. Because They is unnecessary in the third person speech.
In B, third person speech is correctly used and it avoids the THEY which is used to assign anticipation to some group (and wrongly so) in E.

weather conditions that cannot be foreseen vs. weather conditions that are not foreseeable.

Foreseen is a verb and foreseeable is an adjective, right?
We say "in the foreseeable future".
Usage wise the second one is awefully wordy. We can say "unforeseeable weather conditions." MUCH BETTER as in answer choice C.

Secondly, ARE is a state of being. e.g. you are bad. So, can weather conditions be in a state of "unforeseeableness" (BAD WORD , but I guess it serves the purpose)? Answer is NO. They can be unforeseen.

I was stuck between B and D. Is there a better explanation than awkward construction as to why "weather conditions that cannot be foreseen" is better than "weather conditions that are not foreseeable"? I reasoned with myself that unforeseeable is better than not foreseeable.
Also, I googled the difference between foreseen and foreseeable. The answer is foreseen is a verb and foreseeable is an adjective. However, both sentences are using the terms correctly. So not a very helpful difference between the two options.

So I googled further:

According to thesaurus.com, foreseen is a synonym for foreseeable. And, unforeseen is an antonym.
https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/foreseeable
P.S cannot guarantee the authenticity of this website, but it was the first result on google search.

Needless to say, I really am not convinced by awkward construction.

Here is my opinion for this SC problem.

VAN rule:

Verb-Adjective-Noun : this is the order of preference in SC problem.

Now option A, C, and E are out because of using "They" which is pronoun without having clear antecedent.

Between B and D, foreseen is verb and foreseeable is adjective.
So clearly B is winning choice.

Can someone point out how we are comparing "anticipated" to "deposits of spray"?

The spraying of pesticides can be carefully planned, but accidents, weather conditions that cannot be foreseen, and pilot errors often cause much larger "deposits of spray" than "anticipated".

Atleast to me, it seems like the quoted entities above are not equal and hence this comparison is illogical.

Can someone clarify this? Is there an ellipsis in play here? If yes, can someone point it out?

daagh GMATNinja generis hazelnut mikemcgarry egmat

Thanks!

Hi iamdivs,

You're right: this is an example of ellipsis. Here is a slightly longer version of the same sentence:

... accidents, weather conditions, and pilot errors often cause much larger deposits of spray than it is anticipated they will cause.

Dear daagh

Actually, isn’t it all the way around? “cannot be foreseen” is the passive voice while “that are not foreseeable” is the active voice. Probably, back then it was a trend to think that the active voice is preferable to the passive voice. However, now we come to know that GMAC shows no such preference, since the correct choice B uses the passive voice.

Hi dharam44

Either B or D is grammatically correct, but the meaning the latter implies is nonsensical.

B. weather conditions that cannot be foreseen (by some people) – the passive voice correctly implies that it’s people who sometimes can or cannot foresee weather conditions. The inability to foresee belongs to people.

C. unforeseeable weather conditions
D. weather conditions that are not foreseeable
E. unforeseeable weather conditions

“weather conditions that are not foreseeable” is equivalent to “unforeseeable weather conditions”. Both constructions have the same illogical meaning. C, D, and E incorrectly imply that weather conditions themselves are unforeseeable. i.e., as though the ability to be foreseeable or unforeseeable belongs to weather conditions, and that weather conditions themselves decide to be foreseeable or unforeseeable. That’s nonsensical.

To compare, consider “a foldable bicycle” or “a bicycle that is foldable”. We can write so because a bicycle itself has the quality of being foldable. We can also write “an unfoldable bicycle” again because a bicycle itself has such quality (construction), and not because we people fail to fold it. Folding doesn’t depend on us. Note that the same bicycle cannot be both foldable and unfoldable at the same time.

With weather conditions, however, the reverse is true. Weather conditions don’t possess the quality of being foreseeable. It’s we people who can or cannot foresee them. Foreseeing depends on us. The same weather condition either can be foreseen (with enough expertise or technology) or cannot be foreseen (without expertise or technology) at the same time. Once again, foreseeing is our ability, not weather conditions’. The passive voice in B is preferable for this reason – it correctly shows that the implied subject (people) is the one who cannot foresee.

No reputable press, such as The World Street Journal, The Economist, The Financial Times, The New York Times, writes “unforeseeable weather...”. You can check yourself by typing site:wsj.com “unforeseeable weather” or site:economist.com “unforeseeable weather” or whichever reputable press after site:

Dear AnthonyRitz IanStewart AjiteshArun GMATNinja GMATGuruNY DmitryFarber MartyTargetTestPrep VeritasPrepHailey,

What's wrong with D.?

How to decide between "cannot be foreseen" and "are not foreseeable"?

According to https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/unforeseeable, choice D. is idiomatic:

By "idiom", daagh, were you referring to adjective (foreseeable) that is "Attributive: where they occur as the modifier of a noun."? It can only modify a noun. The example here is: Their stupidity was utter. (ungrammatical)

https://english.stackexchange.com/quest ... ede-a-noun

BUT according to below, foreseeable is fine:

Hey varotkorn, breatheanddoit, and dharam44, I think it's a subtle difference in meaning:

cannot be foreseen - can't be done (by people) at the time of the writing.
are not foreseeable - can't be done at all time b/c this is a property (given by God)

victor
By idiom, I meant, usage. cannot be foreseen is more direct than foreseeable. That is all to it. In such matters of style, one should try to be as definitive and swift as possible, rather than delve into it.

I see no real grammatical or logical distinction here, and the official explanation offers none.

I disagree with some of the other replies that claim that there is a difference in meaning between "cannot be foreseen" and "are not foreseeable" -- either could describe being unforeseeable by a given person or being unforeseeable by anyone and everyone.

And note that B and D use the same numbers of words and even virtually the same numbers of letters, so we can't really talk about directness or brevity here (not that I would generally want to).

I think the OG is aiming for the idea of "if you were going to say 'not foreseeable,' why not just say 'unforeseeable' instead?" But that's thin gruel.

Ultimately, this is one of those handful of older questions that I'm pretty sure would never fly on the modern GMAT. I'd try not to worry about it.