Idioms - "research...blank?"

[josephineyu24]

Hello,

I just did the SC Question Bank in the student center and came across an idiomatic construction that I have questions about. The problem is pasted below:

Though research remains to be done into the reasons why the Civil War was triggered, scholars do not regard slavery to be the sole cause.

a. Though research remains to be done into the reasons why the Civil War was triggered, scholars do not regard slavery to be the sole cause.
b. Though research remains to be done into what triggered the Civil War, scholars do not regard slavery as the sole cause.
c. Though the reasons that triggered the Civil War remain to be researched, slavery is not regarded by scholars to be the sole cause.
d. Despite research remaining into the reasons why the Civil War was triggered, scholars do not regard slavery as the sole cause.
e. Scholars do not regard slavery as the sole cause of the Civil War, though the reasons for it being triggered remain to be researched.


The correct answer is B.

I was torn between B and E and ended up not choosing B because the expression "research into" sounds really weird (I didn't catch the ambiguous pronoun in E). I thought the correct idiom would be "...research done ON..." so now I'm not really sure which idioms are OK to use with research. What are some idiomatic expressions that are correct in this case?

Thanks!

[RonPurewal]

Hello,

I just did the SC Question Bank in the student center and came across an idiomatic construction that I have questions about. The problem is pasted below:

Though research remains to be done into the reasons why the Civil War was triggered, scholars do not regard slavery to be the sole cause.

a. Though research remains to be done into the reasons why the Civil War was triggered, scholars do not regard slavery to be the sole cause.
b. Though research remains to be done into what triggered the Civil War, scholars do not regard slavery as the sole cause.
c. Though the reasons that triggered the Civil War remain to be researched, slavery is not regarded by scholars to be the sole cause.
d. Despite research remaining into the reasons why the Civil War was triggered, scholars do not regard slavery as the sole cause.
e. Scholars do not regard slavery as the sole cause of the Civil War, though the reasons for it being triggered remain to be researched.


The correct answer is B.

I was torn between B and E and ended up not choosing B because the expression "research into" sounds really weird (I didn't catch the ambiguous pronoun in E). I thought the correct idiom would be "...research done ON..." so now I'm not really sure which idioms are OK to use with research. What are some idiomatic expressions that are correct in this case?

Thanks!

i've seen "research into", mostly when the following construction is incredibly specific and is introduced with a question word ("whether", "where", "how", etc.)
e.g., we need to conduct further research into whether global warming is actually caused by humans.

i've mostly seen "research on" for more general topics that are NOT introduced by question words, e.g., research on global warming.

--

by the way, the biggest issue with choice (b) is the construction "preposition + noun + VERBing".
i wrote a treatise on this topic here:
post26678.html#p26678

in this case, the intended object of "for" is not "it"; the intended object is the action "being triggered". therefore, this construction is incorrect (for the reasons stated in the linked post).