Question 3
Ishita2000 wrote:
GMATNinja can you please give explanation for Q3?
Question 3 asks us which answer choice is true of Kilbourne's research. The best way to answer this is to find evidence in the passage to eliminate the options one-by-one:
Quote:
A. Based on indirect evidence, it drew conclusions that Donnelly's research corroborated through direct observations of weather phenomena.
Donnelly's research certainly corroborated Kilbourne's conclusions. But was Kilbourne's work based on "indirect evidence"?
Nope, Kilbourne used "biological phenomena in samples from North Atlantic areas." These samples are
direct evidence, not indirect evidence (which would be something like computer models, etc).
(A) is out.
Quote:
B. It was based on observations of marine biological records whose relevance to weather phenomena was first established by Donnelly's research.
The words that stand out here are "first established" -- did Donnelly
first establish something that Kilbourne
later observed?
This timeline is just not laid out in the passage. We know that Kilbourne's work was bolstered by Donnelly's, but there is no indication that Kilbourne's work was based on something that Donnelly said first.
Eliminate (B).
Quote:
C. It used the same methods that Donnelly's research used in investigating weather phenomena but arrived at conclusions that were inconsistent with Donnelly's.
Kilbourne's conclusions were actually quite consistent with Donnelly's.
(C) is out.
Quote:
D. Its conclusions were about weather phenomena that overlapped with, and time periods that were a subset of, those investigated by Donnelly's research.
(D) talks about two things: the weather phenomena and the time periods studied by Donnelly and Kilbourne. Did they study "overlapping" weather phenomena? And was Kilbourne's timeframe a subset of that studied by Donnelly?
Starting with weather phenomena: both researchers studied hurricanes, we know that there was overlap here. So far, so good.
Now, timeframes: Looking back at paragraph 3, we can see that Kilbourne studied the weather between 1730 and 2005. In paragraph 4, we learn that Donnelly studied weather patterns "during the past 5,000 years" -- in other words, from 5,000 years ago to today. This means that Kilbourne's timeframe is a
subset of Donnelly's, just as (D) indicates.
(D) lines up with the info in the passage, so keep (D) for now.
Quote:
E. The questions that it was designed to answer were raised by, but not answered by, the research that Donnelly had previously conducted
Again, there is no indication that Donnelly's research came first. Additionally, Donnelly didn't just ask questions -- he found some answers as well.
Eliminate (E), and (D) is the correct answer to question 3.
I hope that helps!