If plants grown by gardeners required more nutrients than those used by scientists, they why wouldn't the compost work for the scientists since their plants need less nutrients? That would only make everything more confusing
Ashley-TienJuly 10, 2018
Why is B correct?
ChristopherJuly 29, 2018
@erojas, (E) is not correct because there's nothing in the question that has anything to do with plant varieties so this does nothing to solve the apparent paradox. Even at that, (E) makes the paradox worse. Plant scientists posit that compost doesn't provide enough nutrition for the plants they're growing, so if home gardeners have plants that require MORE nutrients, they would perform even worse with compost than the plants used by plant scientists.
@Ashley-Tien, (B) works because it provides a possible explanation for why compost worked for gardeners but didn't work for plant scientists. Plant scientists argue that compost doesn't have enough nutrients, while gardeners using only compost are seeming to succeed. This seems to be a paradox, but what if the compost that plant scientists used was different from the compost that gardeners use? If the gardeners' compost had many more ingredients that, in turn, had many more nutrients, this would explain why their compost works while the plant scientists' compost made out of only grass clippings and leaves fails.
Remember, on these paradox questions you're not looking for an answer that is 100% true or the only possible answer. You're simply looking for an answer that, IF TRUE, could resolve the paradox.
