Q11

[RichardK852]

I contemplated between A, B, E but ultimately chose E on my first try and A on my second try.

A is incorrect because it isn't the evolution of academic research but about past practices.

B is correct because it talks about competitive practices that are also mentioned in the second paragraph regarding patents.

E is incorrect because the passage is about how patenting biotech doesn't affect basic research that much

[ohthatpatrick]

When I see question stems saying,
“The author brought up ______ in order to / primarily to”
I ask myself, ‘What bigger point was the author making in that immediate vicinity?’

The correct answer to these questions is usually one of the “bookend” ideas to the actual detail we’re asked about. In other words, there’s usually a bigger idea right before or right after the detail that the detail is connected to. THAT’S what the correct answer wants to test.

In this case, we know that talking about the “early days” was intended to provide a contrast to lines 35-37, since that clause begins with “While .... “.

Lines 35-37 are saying “we’ve shifted from freely sharing research to protecting/hiding research as a market commodity.”
The “early days” comment is saying, “Well ... technically, this behavior is nothing new. Maybe it’s more prevalent, but it’s always been the case that some researchers would NOT freely share materials; they would restrict access for fear that their market competitors would benefit from it.”

So we’d be looking for an answer that sounds like “the author refers to the early days to indicate that hiding access to potentially marketable materials has been going on since the early days”.

(A) This is definitely not “a brief account of the evolution”

(B) YES, this works. Saying something is “not entirely unprecedented” just means “it has happened before”. That’s exactly what line 38 was saying.

(C) Nostalgia is a trap word meant to entice people who simply read “the early days” and tried to guess. This is opposite of what the author was saying, since she’s saying in the early days research WAS still “tainted” by commercial motives

(D) “more sophisticated” is an unsupported comparison.

(E) this goes opposite of the author’s purpose. The author is ultimately making biotech patents seem okay, and part of that is by explaining that the newfound fear of “hiding access to materials” is not a new thing; it’s been around since the early days.

Hope this helps.