February 1993 LSAT Section 1 Question 24

Many major scientific discoveries of the past were the product of serendipity, the chance discovery of valuable findi...

Harper on August 12, 2020

Help please

Can you explain why D is wrong. I took it to mean that if there are some scientists who do not get grants then they would not be restricted to following exactly what they expected to find and could therefore pursue other avenues and happen upon chance discoveries. Am I thinking too much into it?

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shunhe on August 13, 2020

Hi @Harper,

Thanks for the question! The problem with that reasoning for (D) is that we’re told in the stimulus as a fact that “scientific research tends to be so costly that investigators are heavily dependent on large grants to fund their research.” So people who don’t get the funds probably just don’t do the research, as opposed to magically getting to do what they want. And that’s what knocks out (D), we can’t just assume that the people are going to pursue other avenues; based on what the stimulus tells us, it’s far more likely that they just don’t get to carry out any research.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.