The success of the program to eradicate smallpox has stimulated expert

Apologies for being too abstract.
The success of the program to eradicate smallpox has stimulated experts to pursue what they had not previously considered possible−better control, if not eradication, of the other infections such as measles and yaws. I was referring to possible that is in bold font.
Now I understood the sentence clearly but have a question. better control of diseases is a possibility or better control of diseases is possible?

Both seem correct. can't make out any difference in meaning

daagh
Isn't C fragment ?
There is no conjuction between the sucess.... has .... and they had not considered......

teaser



C: The success of the program to eradicate smallpox has stimulated experts to pursue something they had not previously considered possible

A run-on happens between two ICs.

The first IC is -The success of the program to eradicate smallpox has stimulated experts.

"to pursue something they had not previously considered possible" is not an IC. It actually means, "to pursue something (that/ which) they had not previously considered possible", with the relative pronoun elided and implied. Thus, ---" they had not previously considered possible --- is relative clause modifier that modifies the noun 'something. Therefore, it is not an IC.

GMATNinja EducationAisle daagh

Is "they had not previously considered possible" using past perfect? If so, is it not violating a grammar rule since we don't have 2 events in past?

I know "had considered" would be past perfect. Not sure about "had not considered".

Thanks!

daba

We have already removed D and E for grammatically inappropriate meaning 'such as' and for the use of like to denote examples. If you are further going to remove A, B ,and C for the use of the dangling past perfect without a past tense, then we have to drop this question altogether. GMAT is keen the know what we will do in these tricky circumstances.,

Therefore, go for the best choice among the lot. You cn drop A and B for the same reasons we dropped D and E. You can choose C as th best among the lot despite the hole you pointed out.

Hi dabaobao, this is definitely past perfect and it is not a violation of the rule.

Following two events happened in the past:
(i) stimulated experts to pursue <something>
(ii) earlier, they had not previously considered <something> possible

Clearly, (ii) happened before (i) and hence, is expressed as past perfect.

For example, following would also be a correct sentence:

Peter has finally aced the exam that he had earlier not been able to ace.

Again, ace the exam and not able to ace earlier, are two events that happened in the past. The event that happened earlier (not able to ace earlier) is expressed as past perfect.

Apart from the sentence under consideration, there are other official examples of this nature as well:

The success of the program to eradicate smallpox has stimulated experts to pursue something they had not previously considered possible -- better control, if not eradication, of such infections as measles and yaws.

I have 3 questions pertaining to this question:

1. Isnt the use of "had not 'previously' considered" redundant ?
2. Why is answer choice D wrong ?
3. How are we sure that its only about the two diseases (i.e measles and yaws) . Arent they used only to serve as examples?

The success of the program to eradicate smallpox has stimulated experts to pursue what they had not previously considered possible−better control, if not eradication, of the other infections such as measles and yaws.

(A) what they had not previously considered possible−better control, if not eradication, of the other infections such as "the other" implies these are the only such infections. We can hold on to this option at this point.

(B) what they had not previously considered a possibility−better control, if not eradication, of such infections like "such + like" is incorrect - "such + as" is needed to give specific examples. Eliminate.

(C) something they had not previously considered possible−better control, if not eradication, of such infections as Correct answer.

(D) something not considered a previous possibility−better control and perhaps eradication, of other infections such as Meaning change - "not considered a previous possibility" implies that, in the present, it was considered possible only in the past. The "previous" should, instead, apply to "considered" and not "possibility". Eliminate.

(E) the possibility of what they had not previously considered possible−better control and possibly eradication of infections like "possibility...possible" is redundant. Usage of "like" to give examples is incorrect. Eliminate.

Given the much cleaner option (C), we can eliminate option (A).

Hope this helps.

Hi VeritasKarishma



I got this question wrong on my Practice test. I want to put this in my error log and make the most out of it by reviewing my mistake. However, I don't know what's that takeaway. I was between A and C, but I went ahead with A. I've the thread but reading all the different reasons is doing me more harm than good.

Are you saying the diseases such as measles and yaws should be mentioned before if the author wants to use the definite article "the"?

Yes. You cannot use "the other" here. When I use the definite article 'the', I am implying that I already know what the other infections are. Had it been just "...other infections such as..." in option (A), I would have considered it.

But upon consideration, note that "other infections" doesn't go with the rest of the sentence.

What is it that the experts had not previously considered possible? "That infections could be better controlled, if not eradicated."
As per (A), what experts had not previously considered possible is "better control, if not eradication, of the other infections such as..."
So does it mean that previously they had considered eradicating small pox possible but not "other infections"? No. The sentence is telling us that before the success with smallpox eradication, the experts had thought that infections cannot be better controlled.

Check out the last part of this post (starting with "As for 'had+previously'"). The same thing applies here: is the word "previously" strictly necessary? Probably not. But it helps emphasize the sequence of events: before the program was successful and before that success stimulated experts to pursue something, the experts considered that something to be impossible.

As explained here, there's a fine line between adding words for clarity/emphasis and repeating the same clarification/emphasis in multiple ways. You should definitely look for other decision points before relying on something this subtle to make eliminations.


First off, the comma usage in (D) is a bit confusing. In (C), we have, "... better control, if not eradication, of such infections as measles and yaws" -- the commas are there to separate "if not eradication." The sentence would make perfect sense if we removed this comma-separated part: "... better control of such infections as measles and yaws."

But in (D), we don't have any comma-separated portion. Instead, we just have a single comma: "... better control and perhaps eradication, of other infections such as measles and yaws". So why the comma? We are talking about control OF infections and eradication OF infections, so why would we want to throw a comma in front of the "of" in this case? Granted, the GMAT is pretty lenient when it comes to comma usage, but this is definitely one vote in favor of (C) over (D).

Also, compare "something they had not previously considered possible" (from C) to "something not considered a previous possibility" (from D). In (D), it sounds like the something is currently not considered a possibility (the experts are seemingly pursuing something that is not considered a possibility). That doesn't make any sense. The experts are only pursuing that something now that they've realized it's a possibility.

Also, what does it mean to say that something is NOT considered a previous possibility? Does that mean that the expert currently believe that better control and eradications of other infections was NOT possible in the past? That's not quite accurate. Better control and eradications of other infections WAS possible in the past -- the experts simply didn't know it.

It makes a lot more sense for "previously" to modify the verb in (C) (had not considered) than for "previous" to modify "possibility" in D. That's another vote for (C) over (D).


Agreed! "Such infections as measles and yaws" doesn't imply that those were the ONLY two infections that could be controlled or eradicated. Those are just two examples.

I hope that helps!

Oh man, this question has so many hidden layers to understand! I got this wrong while solving but here is what I have understood after perusing many expert replies:

A
- past perfect use is ok here.
- However, the use of "what" means something very specific, and hence the usage is not great. eg: I want to study what I love. I want to study something I love. both are correct, but the 1st sentence means something very specific and second is generic.
- "the other infections such as x, y" is wrong. Copying Ron's response (from Manhattan Prep forum) below:
in general, you shouldn't have both of these -- i.e., you shouldn't have "the" + noun + "such as", regardless of what else is around it.
"the" implies a definite, specified item or set of items, while "such as" implies items that are unspecified but similar to whatever "x" is. so, basically, the ideas of "the" and "such as" are contradictory.
ex:
you should do the exercises in the book.
--> it wouldn't make sense to have "such as" here, because the book will actually contain a specific group of exercises.

you should do exercises such as those in the book.
--> this means that you can basically do [i]any exercises of the same kind, regardless of whether they actually appear in the book. since this isn't a definite set of exercises, it wouldn't make sense to use "the" here.


B and E such... like wrong

C correct

D
- comma before 'of' doesn't make sense
- Difference between "not considered a previous possibility" and "not previously considered possible"
1st means there was a possibility in the past but now better control and eradication of infections is not considered a previous possibility. so is it a current possibility or future possibility?
2nd means better control and eradication of infections was not considered possible.

Hope this helps!

There is a subtle difference between A & C, and I have to say I got it wrong.

This is a classical example of GMAT focus on meaning.

The difference lies in: "infections such as" vs "such infections as"
- such infections implies the doctors are thinking about those highly uncontrollable diseases they have not thought of in the past, particularly measles and yaws for instance.
- infections such as does not have this detonation, infections are just general infections, could include even cold / flu other low level diseases, and measles and yaws are just two listed out by conincident

imo, there is no redundancy to "the other infections" unlike many suggested here. Also no issue between what vs something

faat99
You don't quite have it. In fact, in most cases, "such X as" and "X such as" are interchangeable. You are reading "infections such as" as if there were a comma before "such." In that case, we'd be talking about all infections, and measles and yaws would just be random examples that could be replaced with any other infection. However, without the comma, we are narrowing down the scope, just as when we say "such infections as." The sentence is specifying that we may be able to control infections along the lines of measles and yaws, not necessarily all infections.

A larger issue in this part of the sentence is the word "the" in A. When we say "the other infections," it now does sound like we are talking about all other infections, but that doesn't match what follows. So "the" alone is reason enough to cut A.

something they had not previously considered possible
here my doubt is----> how can we have two verbs in the sentence (had not previously considered and has stimulated)without using no comma or conjuction to seprate them.

Well, this is equivalent to:

The success of the program to eradicate smallpox has stimulated experts to pursue something (that) they had not previously considered possible.

So, this sentence has:

i) An Independent clause: The success of the program to eradicate smallpox has stimulated experts to pursue something

and

ii) A Dependent clause (relative clause): (that) they had not previously considered possible