Daunted by the threat of costly lawsuits, it was decided by most Ameri

Question

Daunted by the threat of costly lawsuits,  it was decided by most American pharmaceutical companies to abandon doing research in new forms of contraceptives .

(A) it was decided by most American pharmaceutical companies to abandon doing research in new forms of contraceptives

(B) the decision of most American pharmaceutical companies was to abandon doing research in new forms of contraceptives

(C) most American pharmaceutical companies have decided to abandon research in new forms of contraceptives

(D) research in new forms of contraceptives was abandoned by most American pharmaceutical companies

(E) most American pharmaceutical companies decided on abandoning research in new forms of contraceptives

Wwdrok1 · Answer

So the only difference is the present perfect vs simple past. I would go with A because there is no specific timeline given. Thus I assume the intended meaning is to say the companies, since daunted by law suites, have decided to give up research  to date.

vinzycoolfire · Answer

i think option E is correct, we do not know if the decision is effective at present, so it is safer to complete the sentence with past as suggested by "daunted".

anje29 · Answer

There is no reason to select past tense, therefore present perfect is correct option here.

Shiv2016 · Answer

Daunted by the threat of costly lawsuits, it was decided by most American
pharmaceutical companies to abandon doing research in new forms of contraceptives.

Verb-ed modifier:
1) Always modifies the noun preceding it when it appears after the modified noun (no matter if the verb-ed modifier is separated by comma or not).
2) If the verb-ed modifier comes in the starting, then also it will modify the noun after the comma.

In this sentence, who was daunted by the lawsuits?

Pharmaceutical companies. 
So we will have to bring this noun just after the comma.

The correct answer thus is C.

saurabhSuman · Answer

How is it then different from (E) , which also has the same construction?

Ganatra · Answer

Why not E because decide to/upon is the correct idiom rather than decide on.

Posted from my mobile device

Bunuel · Answer

KAPLAN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

Here again we have an introductory modifier,“daunt- ed by the threat of costly lawsuits.” The correct answer has to start with that which this phrase modifies: companies. In (E), “decided on abandoning” is unidiomatic.

SonGoku · Answer

Clearly we can see A,B,D are modifier errors.

Every thing is fine here(Modifier is correct) . Generally we take decision to do something.Keep it

Decided on doing (we some times use while talking but it is unidiomatic as mentioned in the above post)

Final answer is C.

Shrey9 · Answer

let me help you here-

"decided on" is used in colloquial speech to convey that there were two or more options, and i happen to choose the one i "decided on".

eg. we decided on playing cricket..

suggests i could play tennis, stay indoors, or do something else. But, i decided on playing cricket.

Whereas "decided to" states a clear intention (because of the infinitive), or is used to tell the reader that there were no other options while pickng this option and the doer was supposed to pick this one.

eg. i decided to buy a car.

i wanted a car, and i thus bought it.

Here the "american pharma companies", BECAUSE OF THE THREAT, didn't have much of a choice or many options to choose, so they chose to abandon the research.
in other words

They "decided to" abandon the reaseach.

Argp · Answer

Hi  daagh   abhi007   hazelnut   generis   GMATNinja

My question is regarding the tense usage in Option C and E.
C says -  companies... have decided 
E says -  companies... decided

According to the the original sentence, the decision was taken in the past and its done. But in C the decision is still currently relevant.
While I had realized that there is an idiom error in E, I chose C based on this subtle difference.

Is the tense usage a PoE here?

daagh · Answer

argp wrote

The original sentence is an aberrant. The decision might have been taken in the past, but its reign still current. It is not logical to assume that they abandoned the research in the past but have currently resumed the research. Even now they don’t do research in new contraceptives. The decision to abandon is in full vogue. That is the reason the present perfect tense ‘have decided’ is a better one.

VerbalBot · Answer

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Daunted by the threat of costly lawsuits, it was decided by most Ameri

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