Thanks for the question! So let’s recap the argument real quick. We’re told that many major scientific discoveries in the past were the product of serendipity, or basically luck. But now, scientific research is super expensive, so people need grants, and people with grants need to provide clear projections of the outcome of the research, so they ignore the kinds of findings that might’ve been lucky findings in the past. The argument concludes that serendipity can’t play a role in scientific discovery anymore.
Now we’re looking for a necessary assumption of this argument. Let’s take a look at (B), which tells us that in the past, few scientific investigators attempted to make clear predictions of the outcome of their research. Well, is this an assumption the argument needs? No, and we can use the negation test to test it. Let’s say that (B) is false; that in the past, many scientific investigators attempted to make clear predictions of the outcome of their research. Well, so what? Maybe that’s 50%, we can even say 51%, but maybe all the serendipitous discoveries were the other 49%. So the argument still stands without (B), and so it’s not a necessary assumption and not the right answer.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
