SC General question based on my observation

Voodoo, your earlier sentence is grammatically correct. You can use "IT" as a placeholder in 3 situations on the GMAT without a noun antecedent.
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A) Postpone infinitive subjects

According to Maria, IT is not ethically right TO SPEAK EVIL of someone.

Here, the pronoun "it" is being used as a placeholder. It refers to the infinitive phrase "to speak evil of someone".

Generally, if I rephrased the sentence as:
"TO speak evil od someone according to maria is not ethically right".

It is awkward to start with an infinitive TO, so I can postpone the infinitive by using the pronoun IT in the subject as done in your original sentence.
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B) Postpone THAT clause

THAT we spoke evil made us sad

This is a bad construction. Here, we can use the pronoun it to postpone the clause as follows:

IT made us sad THAT we spoke evil of someone
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There is one more way, if you are referring to the Manhattan SC guide go to the advances strategy section (Pronouns and Modifiers) and you will find all this explained under the "Placeholder It" section.


The Manhattan question is a little more tricky. If you look at the question

According to one expert, the cause of genetic irregularities in many breeds of dog is not so much that dogs are being bred for looks or to meet the other narrow criteria as that the breeds have relatively few founding members.

What we are trying to say here is that there is a cause and effect relationship. The genetic problems in dogs is more likely due to X than because of Y.

If we use "it" here, the sentence as you have mentioned earlier becomes:

e.g.

According to one expert, it is not so much the cause of genetic irregularities in many breeds of dog that they are being bred for looks or meeting other narrow criteria as much as that the breeds have relatively few founding members.

Here it is not referring to ANY noun antecedent as it would in a sentence like:
"The book is on the table but IT is missing a page".

Neither is it used as mentioned in the 3 situations above. Hence, the usage is incorrect.

HTH

OK...if you go to the link, Ron says.....It doesnt have a clear antecedent.....WHY????

voodoo_child wrote:OK...if you go to the link, Ron says.....It doesnt have a clear antecedent.....WHY????

Well I recon he means, it doesn't have an antecedent that would make sense here. Can you list the antecedents that you recon the pronoun "it" is referring to in this sentence? If we ask the question "What is not the cause of genetic irregularities?" do you get an answer that can logically replace the pronoun "it" here?

Also, if we were to argue in purely grammatical terms barring the usage of "it", the sentence has several errors and other options are much more lucrative!

thanks Ron. Appreciate it!