samanthaJ79 wrote:I am pretty sure that the right answer is A.
This question is flawed.
The goal of the magazine: To halt yearly plundering of rare wildflowers.
The Plan: Refrain from printing articles or advertisements that would encourage plundering.
OA, E: Revenues from sales (plundering) of rare wildflowers support discovery of ways to propagate the wildflowers in nurseries.
Superficially the OA seems to indicate that stopping the plunder of the wildflowers stops support of discovery of techniques the use of which would reduce the plundering, and so the magazine is defeating its own purposes by stopping the plunder. That superficial analysis of the effects of the the plan is the rationale supporting the OA.
However, that analysis does not really make sense, because to the degree that the magazine stops the plunder, the discovery of the new techniques becomes unnecessary.
In fact, in the real world, the development of such techniques would likely continue to be somewhat supported, possibly by commercial interests, even if the revenues from sales of the wildflowers were to decrease.
So the OA to this question does not really make sense, and therefore this question is flawed.
Answer choice A, while maybe not convincing, makes more sense than the OA, in that the magazine's policy would reduce the degree to which new gardeners are discouraged from choosing to purchase rare wildflowers as the gardeners continue gardening in future seasons.
This question presents a conundrum in that by choosing a superficially correct answer one gets the question "right", while by choosing what appears to be a better answer one gets it wrong.
My takeaway is that if I run into such a question on the GMAT I am going to assume that the appropriate depth of analysis to use for getting right answers is closer to that which gets me to answer choice E than to that which shows that choice E does not really make sense. Really though, one can only hope that any question that one sees on the test is better constructed than this one is.
