<p>Can someone explain questions 13 on page 608? None of the choices make any sense to me.</p>
<p>It asks what the passage means by "state". There are several definitions of the word state, but in this instance, they are referring to the current status of the scientific something or other, thus the answer is E, Condition. Hope that helps!</p>
<p>Thanks for your help Sasquatch219, but I'm still confused. What do they mean by "one-sided and incomplete accounts of the state of scientific knowledge?"</p>
<p>one-sided and incomplete accounts of the state of scientific knowledge</p>
<p>unless im mistaken, the first paragraph of passage 1 is making the point that popularizers (in this case environmentalists) show a totally biased opinion about the environment's quality. by presenting the biased opinion that the quality of the environment is bad, they "hide important scientific disagreements" (lines 4-5) to the population and only account for what they believe to be is true (the disagreements involve others who believe that the quality of the environment is not really that bad, but these beliefs are hidden not exposed to the population). by not exposing the other side's beliefs, only one side of the disagreement is presented, and that's the whole "one-sided and incomplete accounts of the state of scientific knowledge" </p>
<p>im not sure if i explained it very well. does it kinda make sense?</p>
<p>Kind of. What's the purpose of the phrase "of the state"? Couldn't they just say "one-sided and incomplete accounts of scientific knowledge"?</p>
<p>are you really going to sit there the day of the SAT and wonder why ETS decided to phrase something weirdly?</p>
<p>No but if I can't understand it, how can figure out the correct answer? =/</p>