Unlike physicians of the early twentieth century, many physicians now

In my view "a conversation about a drug being dangerous or not" and "a conversation about how beneficial a drug is" are contradictory but I think you make a really good point.

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Questions beginning with ‘like’ and ‘unlike’ are generally based on errors of comparison. At least one or two options can be negated on the basis of these errors.

In sentences that begin with ‘like’ or ‘unlike’, the noun that is present immediately after these words is the object of comparison.
Unlike physicians of the early twentieth century

The noun after the comma should also be the object of comparison.
Unlike physicians of the early twentieth century, many physicians


This sentence begins with the phrase “Unlike physicians of the early twentieth century”, so the comparison should be between “physicians of the early twentieth century” and “another group of physicians”. Based on this rule, we can eliminate Options C and D.

Option C has a passive construction that puts the pronoun ‘it’ after the comma, implying that ‘it’ is being compared with ‘physicians of the twentieth century’.

Option D has the noun ‘fevers’ after the comma, implying that the comparison is between ‘physicians ….. century’ and ‘fevers’.

Options A, B and E are similar to each other. The difference is that Option A has the conjunction ‘and’ and Options B and E have the conjunction ‘but’. According to the rules of parallelism of correlative conjunctions (conjunctions that are used in pairs), the correct idiomatic pair is ‘not-but’. So, Option A can also be eliminated.

Option E leaves out the word manifestations and also uses the word ‘diseased’ instead of ‘disease’, thereby changing the meaning of the sentence. Fevers do not belong to ‘diseased organisms’; they are a sign that there are disease organisms in the body.

Therefore, B is the most appropriate option.

Jayanthi Kumar.

Hi,

That’s a very interesting point that you’ve made. The two ideas aren’t exactly contradictory.

In this sentence, I think it comes down to the rules of grammar, more specifically, the rules of parallelism.

Parallelism of correlative conjunctions (joining words that are always used in pairs) applies here. Since the word ‘not’ has been used, the word ‘but’ has to follow it idiomatically.
“many physicians now believe that fevers ranging from 100° to 102° are not dangerous manifestations of disease organisms but are”
The conjunction ‘and’ cannot follow ‘not’ when ‘not’ is being used as a conjunction.

In this sentence, the correlative conjunctions are used not so much for contradiction as for the purpose of negation.

Jayanthi Kumar.

Hi experts,

B is definitely the correct answer, but isn't the idiom "...not x...but y"? And X and Y have to be parallel. We have x as a noun and y as a verb here. Is this not a hard rule to follow?