Margaret Mead, the best known anthropologist

[visitdhiraj]

Dear Ron,

Trust you are in good health and doing great!

Margaret Mead, the best known anthropologist of the 20th century, helped shape public opinion on fundamentally important areas like attitudes toward children and family, along with the relative merits of competition and cooperation.

choices

A. shape public opinion in such fundamentally important areas like attitudes toward children and families, along with
B. shape public opinion in such fundamentally important areas as attitudes toward children and families and
c. to shape public opinion about such fundamentally important areas like attitudes toward children and families, also about
d. the shaping of public opinion for fundamentally important areas such as attitudes toward children and families, and those toward
e. the shaping of public opinion around fundamentally important areas like attitudes toward children and families, and those of

The official answer is B. This is a GMAT Prep Verbal SC

I understand the difference between like and such as. So now I was confused between option B and option D

I chose option D.

My questions are the following

1.What is wrong with D? or why is B better than D

2. In option B, isn't the sentence using double verb together. "helped Shape". I understand that both helped and shape are verbs and they should not be used together in above manner.

3. Any other problems with option D.

I am sorry I couldn't find this question on your forums. The other forum only discussed like vs as.

kindly clarify my doubts

Dhiraj

[jlucero]

Dear Ron,

Trust you are in good health and doing great!

Margaret Mead, the best known anthropologist of the 20th century, helped shape public opinion on fundamentally important areas like attitudes toward children and family, along with the relative merits of competition and cooperation.

choices

A. shape public opinion in such fundamentally important areas like attitudes toward children and families, along with
B. shape public opinion in such fundamentally important areas as attitudes toward children and families and
c. to shape public opinion about such fundamentally important areas like attitudes toward children and families, also about
d. the shaping of public opinion for fundamentally important areas such as attitudes toward children and families, and those toward
e. the shaping of public opinion around fundamentally important areas like attitudes toward children and families, and those of

The official answer is B. This is a GMAT Prep Verbal SC

I understand the difference between like and such as. So now I was confused between option B and option D

I chose option D.

My questions are the following

1.What is wrong with D? or why is B better than D

2. In option B, isn't the sentence using double verb together. "helped Shape". I understand that both helped and shape are verbs and they should not be used together in above manner.

3. Any other problems with option D.

I am sorry I couldn't find this question on your forums. The other forum only discussed like vs as.

kindly clarify my doubts

Dhiraj

2. Since the GMAT uses this, it must be ok. Think of this almost as a helper verb. You can help someone or you can help do something. And since this question is more about MM helping to do something, A/B/C are actually preferred to D/E. Also, note that you can help do something or help to do something, so the split in AB/C is irrelevant here.

1/3. D has several "awkward" issues that sort of combine to make it a less desirable option than B. First is the verb/noun issue mentioned above. Second, in B, MM helped shape public opinion in important areas... while in D, MM helped the shaping of public opinion for important areas... This is simply idiomatic, but in works better than for here. There's also a strange comma before "and" in D, which isn't necessary when you are discussing two things (although there are some exceptions). Finally, there's a meaning difference between B/D. We are listing the areas in which MM helped shape public opinion, but in B the list includes "attitudes toward children and family and the relative merits of competition and cooperation" while D has "attitudes toward children and family and those toward relative merits of competition and cooperation". We aren't wanting to say that MM helped shape public opinion on "the attitudes toward relative merits" but rather she helped shape public opinion on the merits themselves. This is a subtle difference, but a clue here is that we wouldn't even need to repeat attitudes in this sentence. We could just say "attitudes towards X & Y" and get our point across.

[Kovid]

What is wrong with A? What would be the decision point to eliminate this option?

[RonPurewal]

such ... as ...
this is a VERY basic idiom.

such ... like ...
this is not a thing.

that's the most fundamental way to get rid of that choice.

[RonPurewal]

i apologize for the inconvenience, but, before any further discussion of this problem can occur, i'd like to see a screen shot of this problem from the free GMAT PREP software.

i don't have this problem in any of my archives, and it is VERY suspiciously rare on the internet (google finds it literally nowhere except a couple of Korean sites).
so... we definitely can't keep discussing it here without proof of its original provenance.

thanks.