Can someone please explain how the answer is B? I chose D

Notice how this kind of CR usually are NOt tested on the GRE: fill the blank.

Usually, the blank is one of the following things
-weaken
-strengthen
- conclusion

In this case is the second option

however, it cannot be concluded that virtually the only biologists interested in research that such experiments could address are those biologists already employed by the space program, since

WHY

because IF we have more biologist OUTSIDE of the space program what the gov is willing to do make sense


D the space program employs only a small percentage of the research biologists employed by the government

This is pretty close because it says the biologist inside the program are < of those outside the program but STILL inside the gov

We want the biologists OUTSIDE completely. For example those unemployed or in other universities. OUTSIDE the gov.

I hope this helps
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Here's my analysis for the above question :

Fact 1 : The govt. space program is providing funding for design experiment to university biologists who are not already employed to their space program.
Fact 2 : Very few responses to the funding offer.
Fact 3 : It cannot be inferred that the only biologists who are interested in this research are already employed by the space program

Given Argument is : Little interest has been expressed in the funding offer by university biologists who are not employed by the space program.

Option A is wrong. Information is related to the employment by the space program, which in my point of view is irrelevant to the argument.

Option C is wrong. This option is attacking the funding offer provided by the govt. Our argument is focused on the offer given to the biologists only and why we didn't get enough responses from them. The interest of other scientists in the research is out of scope.

Option D is wrong. No evidence regarding the employment of research biologists by the space program who are already employed by the govt.

Option E is wrong. Information related to the research is not relevant to our argument.


Option B is correct. The offer was focused only to the university biologists. Option B broadens the scope of considering the biologists who are employed in industries. The industry biologists are greater in number than the university biologists and since the funding offer wasn't extending to them, the number of responses for the same is few.

What threw me off, is the line : " funding for designing experiments to be conducted during space flights has been made available by the government space program to university biologists not already employed by the space program".

So isn't this offer specifically for university biologists? Then why is B the answer ?

For the first time, funding for designing experiments to be conducted during space flights has been made available by the government space program to university biologists not already employed by the space program.

Finally for biologists that are IN the university programs but NOT in the space program

From the fact that little interest has been expressed in this offer


We had almost ZERO interest in this offer by the gov BY the biologists in the university

, however,

it cannot be concluded that virtually the only biologists interested in research that such experiments could address are those biologists already employed by the space program, since _____.

BUT we cannot say FOR sure that those biologists who are IN the university but NOT in the space program AND considering also the almost zero interest in the offer by the program we will not have experiments conducted in the scenario above ?

The only reason we could have

ON ONE hand more experiments for the space program and ON THE OTHER HAND zero interest + biologists NOT already in the space program ?

is to have MORE biologists OUTSIDE in the field we are considering at the moment: university. If we have MORE biologists in other filed (in this case in the industry as a whole) we are able to reconcile the differents interests in play

I hope this helps

PS: this is the way to sort out a critical reasoning question
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