Believed to have originated from local hospitals, oceangoing garbage

Question

Believed to have originated from local hospitals, oceangoing garbage scows dump medical refuse that  may provide an explanation for the existence of unacceptable levels of pollution at several local beaches.

A. Believed to have originated from local hospitals, oceangoing garbage scows dump medical refuse that
B. Oceangoing garbage scows dump medical refuse that is believed to have originated from local hospitals, and this
C. Oceangoing garbage scows dump medical refuse, believed to have originated from local hospitals, that
D. Originated, it is believed, from local hospitals, an oceangoing garbage scow dumps medical refuse and
E. Originating, it is believed, from local hospitals, oceangoing garbage scows dump medical refuse and

adkikani · Answer

GMATNinja   VeritasPrepKarishma   generis   GMATNinjaTwo

Why is (A) incorrect?

Is it because although Believed correctly modifies garbage, the modifier THAT here incorrectly modifies entire preceding clause
and we need parallelism as suggested better in (B) D and E are total mess since we need FANBOYS to connect two independent clauses.
C is out because of modifier issue. Coma + believed is incorrect.

abansal1805 · Answer

A is incorrect due to a misplaced modifier. The closest noun to "believed to have originated from local hospitals" is scows. So A incorrectly implies that scows originated from local hospitals.

techiesam · Answer

I think all the answer choices are incorrect .I found B is wrong because it uses "this" to modify an action or an entire clause.Is it acceptable?

abhimahna · Answer

Hey  adkikani  ,

'That' in A is actually used as an essential modifier, hence making a wrong meaning.

Moreover as  abansal1805  mentioned, it has modifier issue as well.

Hey  techiesam  ,

I don't think there is any issue with option B. By using 'and this' , we are trying to convey the result of what happened in the previous clause.

techiesam · Answer

But Manhattan GMAT says to avoid "this" kind of use of this.It says Finally, on the GMAT, do not use this or these in place of nouns. A sentence such as  This is great  is unacceptably vague to the GMAT. and  this , like every pronoun, refers to some noun phrase, not to any clause.

According to Manhattan GMAT

Scientists have found high levels of iridium in certain geological formations around the world, AND THIS suggests the cataclysmic impact of a meteor millions of years ago.--- The sentence is wrong.

daagh   sayantanc2k  
any help.

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

techiesam  I agree that the use of "this" in B is not very GMAT-like. However, there is no better answer. The sentence is clearly trying to convey that the whole situation may be responsible for the levels of pollution. It doesn't make sense to say that the refuse itself "provides an explanation," because we're trying to understand why that refuse/pollution is showing up on beaches, so we need to include the practice of dumping. B is not a very good answer, but the others are worse.

patto · Answer

Can any expert suggest why THIS is correct? I thought that the THIS pronoun cannot be used to refer to an entire clause.

Lampard42 · Answer

generis   GMATNinja  Is the usage of "This" to refer to the clause correct? Can a preposition refer to an entire clause? if yes, then which ones can refer to the entire clause.

generis · Answer

Hi  Arvind42  , up to now, GMAC has not accepted the use of  this  to refer to a clause or the idea or event described by that clause.

Some grammar constructions have no gray areas.
Subjects and verbs must agree.
Fragments or comma splices are incorrect.

We cannot predict with certainty what GMAC will do next in areas that occasionally  become  gray areas.

Will GMAC publish a question in 2021 in which "this" is allowed to refer to a clause?
Highly doubtful. But I cannot give you a guarantee.

I am 99 percent certain that GMAC will not allow THIS to stand for a clause.
For example, in one official question that has appeared year after year in the guide, the word  this  is used as it is in (B) here,
and the official explanation contains exactly one sentence about (D): The referent of THIS is unclear.

Spoiler alert : One incorrect answer to the official question just referenced is revealed. 
 In this official question (OG 2020 #879),  HERE,  the OE rejects (D) solely because "  THIS has no clear referent." In that option D,  this  is supposed to refer to the facts described in the clause.

The rule seems clear enough.

Dmitry Farber, above, wrote a great answer.
 This question is not very GMAT-like. 
The other four options contain errors that are worse than the "this" error.

Takeaway: I am 99 percent that GMAC would not allow "this" to stand for an entire clause or an unstated idea.
In this question, we choose option (B) despite what is almost certain error in its use of "this" because (B) is the best of the lot.

I hope that analysis helps.

toyesh30 · Answer

Can you please tell what is wrong with Option C

Oceangoing garbage scows dump medical refuse, believed to have originated from local hospitals,  that  may provide an explanation for the existence of unacceptable levels of pollution at several local beaches.

Here "that" is referring to "dump medical refuse", which may provide an explanation for the existence of unacceptable levels of pollution at several local beaches.

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

toyesh30

The trouble is that "that" creates a noun modifier, not an adverbial modifier, so we can only modify "medical refuse," not the action ("dump"). The refuse on its own does not provide an explanation. For that matter, neither does the whole action. Rather, it's the *fact* that the dumping occurs that provides the explanation, and that's why the correct answer introduces a new pronoun ("this") to stand in for the whole idea. In other words, "this" = "the fact that scows dump refuse from hospitals." As I've said above, I'm not sure this would fly on the GMAT, but that is the intended meaning.

arya251294 · Answer

I believe most of your queries are already answered.
Just wanted to highlight that "Believed to have originated from local hospitals" is not modifying garbage in option A as garbage in option A is used as a noun-adjective to the noun scows(small flat-bottomed boats).

Sometimes in English nouns are used to modify other nouns, such as, " a sports car".
Here sports is a noun but is acting as an adjective for another noun "car".

VerbalBot · Answer

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Believed to have originated from local hospitals, oceangoing garbage

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Believed to have originated from local hospitals, oceangoing garbage

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