Either high cholesterol or unbalance homocysteine levels can,

Question

Either high cholesterol or unbalance homocysteine levels  can, along with elevated blood pressure, be factors contributing to  the incidence of heart disease in this country.

(A) can, along with elevated blood pressure, be factors contributing to 
(B) along with elevated blood pressure, can one or the other be contributing factors in
(C) can, along with elevated blood pressure, contribute as factors to
(D) can be a contributing factor to, along with elevated blood pressure
(E) can contribute, along with elevated blood pressure, to

VeritasPrepBrian · Accepted Answer

I'd look at the problems with C in two ways:

1) The meaning is off. When you include the "as factors" caveat, you're attributing "as factors" as an important part of how they contribute. For example if you say "As a university employee, you can receive free tuition for your immediate family" -- there "as a university employee" is integral to your ability to receive tuition. Or "Stacy was able, as CEO, to turn the company's fortunes around" -- that means she did that as CEO, not in a previous capacity as VP or Director of Ops or whatever.

So...when C says "are able to contribute as factors to..." it's assigning extra value to "as factors" as integral to how high cholesterol or unbalanced homocysteine contribute heart disease. Which doesn't really make sense..."factors" is kind of a placeholder definition - whether or not we give them that designation doesn't really matter as to whether they can contribute to heart disease.

2) Redundancy. If they're contributing to heart disease, then they're automatically factors that lead to heart disease...we don't need to call that out specifically (especially because of point #1 - calling it out specifically creates a strange meaning). E says the same thing more concisely without that redundancy, and therefore has a much cleaner, more precise meaning.

Abhishek009 · Answer

Meaning : Out of the 2 factors ( high cholesterol or unbalance homocysteine levels ) can contribute to the incidence of heart disease in the country.

Contribute to : Correct Idiomatic Usage

Either   high cholesterol   or   unbalance homocysteine levels   can   contribute  , along with elevated blood pressure,   to   the incidence of heart disease in this country.

Further Either X or Y : Correct Idiomatic usage and is correctly used in option (E), thus Answer must be (E)

push12345 · Answer

After seeing the options we can narrow down to C and E

Clearly E conveys meaning in better way as C includes factors and contribute which makes kind of redundancy.

Good explanations by
 VeritasPrepBrian   Abhishek009

avikroy · Answer

Dear Sir,

Is answer option A grammatically correct?? it sure is not concise or succinct How do we eliminate option A

EpilepticLearner · Answer

Please why is A incorrect? Should "factors" be singular?

VeritasPrepBrian · Answer

Good questions on (A). A couple things on (A):

1) The meaning there is off. If you look at the subject/verb setup, (A) says "either X or Y can be factors" (and then "contributing to..." qualifies what kind of factors) - this makes the fact that these conditions contribute to heart disease kind of an afterthought, vs. E which more directly says "they contribute to heart disease." The purpose of the sentence is to say that these conditions lead to heart disease...(A) kind of buries the headline by saying they're factors as the main thought, and then qualifying those types of factors also. (NOTE: A vs. E to me is a great example of why having five answer choices is a HUGE advantage vs. trying to edit a single sentence in isolation - I wouldn't necessarily see this meaning problem unless I compare A and E, but when I do I think "yeah that meaning in A is off").

Also "can be factors" puts the conditional "can be" in an odd spot - the conditional "sometimes but not always" isn't that these conditions could be factors, but that they could contribute to heart disease. "Can be factors" suggests that we don't know whether they're always factors...what we really don't know is whether these factors can cause heart disease.

Similarly the tense on "contributing" is off, too - that suggests that these are temporarily contributing to heart disease, but with scientific cause-and-effect, logically they either contribute to heart disease always, or they don't. There isn't a "during this limited period high cholesterol will cause heart disease, but after the summer solstice that won't be the case anymore" kind of thing. If it were "are factors that contribute" then we solve that problem by using a more definitive tense fitting of the scientific subject, but as written it's too temporary.

2) It's a tricky one but in an Either/Or construction, the singularity/plurality is dictated by the noun that comes after "or." And here although "levels" is plural, we're not really saying the levels themselves are what cause heart disease, but rather the state of them being unbalanced. You really should have "unbalanced homocysteine levels can be a factor," singular.

This is one that's pretty ugly - you wouldn't say "unbalanced levels is a factor" but rather "unbalanced levels are a factor"...as a test-taker what I love about E is that it just avoids the situation altogether. That's pretty classic GMAT - wrong answers introduce a really unique and odd structure, but instead of making you choose a unique grammatical structure, they give you an answer that just totally avoids it.

Harshjha001 · Answer

Can someone please explain me whats the difference between -:

can contribute , along with elevated blood pressure, to

and

can , along with elevated blood pressure, contribute to

Thanks in advance .  VeritasPrepBrian   GMATNinja

VerbalBot · Answer

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Either high cholesterol or unbalance homocysteine levels can,

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Either high cholesterol or unbalance homocysteine levels can,

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