The passage provides the most support for inferring which one of the following statements?
Minervaon August 30, 2019
A vs E
I was torn between A and E and ended up not choosing E because I couldn't find any language that could allow me to infer that the study was unusual. Can someone help out?
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(A) says, "Narrow, tilted fracture zones in underlying bedrock are more likely to be found in arid regions than in other regions."
The problem with (A) is that it's an unsupported comparison. We happen to look at arid regions, but this does not mean that we'll be more likely to find these fracture zones in arid regions than any other region. Thus, we can get rid of this answer choice.
(E) says, "The groundwater-locating study described in the final paragraph was not a typical dowsing study."
We know that this study used the most successful dowsers, and we also know from earlier on in the passage that successful dowsers aren't well represented in typical dowsing studies. Since this study did represent successful dowsers well, we have a strong reason to believe that it wasn't a typical study. Thus, we arrive at (E) by combining information about the study with information that was presented to us earlier in the passage (where the passage outlines the arguments that the proponents of dowsing have), so (E) is the correct answer choice.
Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any other questions!