prep 80

toseetoo

80.(24979-!-item-!-188;#058&001383)



In many scientific disciplines, scientists generally do not do highly creative work beyond the age of forty, a tendency that has normally been taken to show that aging carries with it a loss of creative capacity.However, by the age of forty most scientists have been working in their chosen field for at least fifteen years, so an alternative explanation is that spending too long in a single field reduces the opportunity for creative thought.

Investigating which of the following would be most useful in choosing between the competing explanations described above?

A. Whether among those scientists who do highly creative work beyond age forty a large proportion entered their field at a considerably later age than is common

B. Whether scientists' choice of research projects tends to be influenced by their own belief that their most creative work will be done relatively early in their career

C. Whether scientists who are older than forty tend to find more satisfaction in other activities, such as teaching and mentoring, than they do in pursuing their own research

D. Whether funding agencies are more inclined to award research grants to scientists who are veterans in their field than to scientists who are relative newcomers

E. Whether there is significant variation among scientific fields in the average age at which scientists working in those fields are at their most productive

答案是A，但A 回答“是”就支持解释2反对解释1，但是回答“不是”，充其量就是把两个解释全否了而不是支持一个反对另一个。仍旧困惑中。哪位高人给解释下，谢谢！

bonfin

the problem gives two possible explanations for the scientists' loss of creativity: (1) they're too old, (2) they've been working in the same field for too long.

therefore, we need some sort of thing that DIFFERENTIATES between these two -- in other words, a situation in which one of them would be true, but not the other.
it's impossible for (2) to be true unless (1) is also true -- they can't accumulate a large amount of experience in one field without advancing to a certain age. therefore, the only situation that could possibly disambiguate these factors would be a situation in which (1) is true but (2) is false -- i.e., a situation in which the scientists have reached the age in question, but have not been working in the field for long.
choice (a) fits this requirement perfectly. the others don't.