skim wrote:
Unlike the conviction held by many of her colleagues that genes were reatively simple and static, Barbara McClintock adhered to her own more complicated ideas about how genes might operate, and in 1983, at the age of 81, was awarded a Nobel Prize for her discovery that the genes in corn are capable of moving from one chromosomal site to another.
(A) Unlike the conviction held by many of her colleagues that genes were
(B) Although many of her colleagues were of the conviction of genes being
(C) Contrary to many of her colleagues being convinced that genes were
(D) Even though many of her colleagues were convinced that genes were
(E) Even with many of her colleagues convinced of genes being
Let's focus on the splits first, Ill start with the ending splits:
Even though the correct answer has this word, "were" in my opinion incorrectly implies that genes had a trait before that they do not have anymore. Because the other options had other, more serious flaws, I picked D anyway but initial assessment of end splits creates uncertainty.. Can we REALLY use "were"?
Beginning splits are all over the place here, we seem to have a 2-1-1-1 split. "Unlike" as an introductionary word sounds weird but AFAIK, is not by default wrong. What makes A wrong is that "conviction held by many of her collegues" implies her collegues are holding conviction.. Wrong.
"Although" is incorrect because it sort of tells us that "even though her collegues believed X, she adhered to her own idea". This is not the intended meaning, the intent is not to tell us what she believes IN SPITE OF the beliefs of her collegues, the intent is to specifically show us that Barbara did not agree with consensus. Therefore B is wrong. Furthermore, "were of the conviction" creates a question mark for us, it isn't necessarily wrong but it sure does sound weird. Since we've already eliminated B for other reasons, we don't need to focus on "were of the conviction".
"Contrary" implies that Barbara does something that her collegues do not do. This is the correct intent of the sentence, however "being" and "were" do not follow logically; "being" should be "were" since "adhered" modifies Barbara.. Notice the tense.
"Even with" implies that "Barbara believes this, even in the cases when her collegues are convinced of".. This is not what the author intends, he or she is not trying to tell us that Barbara adhered to her own ideas in case X, Y and Z. The author is trying to tell us that CONTRARY to her collegues, she believes X.
D uses "were" in a correct way to parallel collegues and genes, and it uses "even THOUGH" correctly which says that "she believed X though her collegues believed Y", this is basically another way of saying "CONTRARY to her collegues, Barbara believes X".
So even though I was unsure of whether "were" is tense-wise correct, there are almost ALWAYS more than one fault with the other options and therefor you should not impulsively eliminate options just because you are not sure if they are correct. Only when you are 100% certain of a split being wrong should you eliminate it.