CAT 2018 Slot 1 — VARC Question 33
Answer the following question based on the information given below.
When researchers at Emory University in Atlanta trained mice to fear the smell of almonds(by pairing it with electric shocks), they found, to their consternation, that both the children and grandchildren of these mice were spontaneously afraid of the same smell. That is not supposed to happen. Generations of schoolchildren have been taught that the inheritance of acquired characteristics is impossible. A mouse should not be born with something its parents have learned during their lifetimes, any more than a mouse that loses its tail in an accident should give birth to tailless mice. . . .
Modern evolutionary biology dates back to a synthesis that emerged around the 1940s-60s,which married Charles Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection with Gregor Mendel’s discoveries of how genes are inherited. The traditional, and still dominant, view is that adaptations – from the human brain to the peacock’s tail – are fully and satisfactorily explained by natural selection (and subsequent inheritance). Yet [new evidence] from genomics, epigenetic and developmental biology [indicates] that evolution is more complex than we once assumed. . . .
In his book On Human Nature (1978), the evolutionary biologist Edward O Wilson claimed that human culture is held on a genetic leash. The metaphor [needs revision]. . . . Imagine a dog-walker (the genes) struggling to retain control of a brawny mastiff (human culture). The pair’s trajectory (the pathway of evolution) reflects the outcome of the struggle. Now imagine the same dog-walker struggling with multiple dogs, on leashes of varied lengths, with each dog tugging in different directions. All these tugs represent the influence of developmental factors, including epigenetic, antibodies and hormones passed on by parents, as well as the ecological legacies and culture they bequeath. . . .
The received wisdom is that parental experiences can’t affect the characters of their offspring. Except they do. The way that genes are expressed to produce an organism’s phenotype – the actual characteristics it ends up with – is affected by chemicals that attach to them. Everything from diet to air pollution to parental behavior can influence the addition or removal of these chemical marks, which switches genes on or off. Usually these so called‘ epigenetic’ attachments are removed during the production of sperm and eggs cells, but it turns out that some escape the resetting process and are passed on to the next generation, along with the genes. This is known as ‘epigenetic inheritance’, and more and more studies are confirming that it really happens. Let’s return to the almond-fearing mice. The inheritance of an epigenetic mark transmitted in the sperm is what led the mice’s offspring to acquire an inherited fear. . . .
Epigenetic is only part of the story. Through culture and society, [humans and other animals] inherit knowledge and skills acquired by [their] parents. . . . All this complexity . . .points to an evolutionary process in which genomes (over hundreds to thousands of generations), epigenetic modifications and inherited cultural factors (over several, perhaps tens or hundreds of generations), and parental effects (over single-generation time spans)collectively inform how organisms adapt. These extra-genetic kinds of inheritance give organisms the flexibility to make rapid adjustments to environmental challenges, dragging genetic change in their wake – much like a rowdy pack of dogs.
Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd one out.
- In many cases time inconsistency is what prevents our going from intention to action.
- For people to continuously postpone getting their children immunized, they would need to be constantly fooled by themselves.
- In the specific case of immunization, however, it is hard to believe that time inconsistency by itself would be sufficient to make people permanently postpone the decision if they were fully cognizant of its benefits.
- In most cases, even a small cost of immunization was large enough to discourage most people.
- Not only do they have to think that they prefer to spend time going to the camp next month rather than today, they also have to believe that they will indeed go next month.
Answer & solution
Answer: 4
The paragraph is about time inconsistency and its effects on immunization. Thus statement 1 should start the paragraph as it talks about time inconsistency in general. This should be followed by statement 3 as it mentions time inconsistency in the specific case of immunization. Statement 3 talks about how time inconsistency by itself is insufficient to permanently postpone immunization. Thus it should be followed by statement 2 which states how it is possible to postpone immunization by fooling themselves. This is then followed by statement 5 as it talks about how people fool themselves. Thus the correct order is 1-3-2-5. However, statement 4 talks about the cost of immunization which is a different to the topic being discussed in the paragraph – that of time inconsistency.
Hence, the correct answer is 4.