PrepTest 137, Section 1, Question 3
Until my present study, African American entertainer Lorenzo(472 more words not shown)
Suppose that a well-known nuclear(41 more words not shown)
- Abeing at considerable(6 more words not shown)
- Ba source of(11 more words not shown)
- Ca type of(9 more words not shown)
- Da type of(16 more words not shown)
- Ean authoritative account(6 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
The subject has changed from an entertainer to a physicist, but the concern about memory still applies. A person recounting important events from their own life has a stake in how those events are remembered. Even sincere recollections can favor the version the person prefers.
What we’re looking for
We should therefore predict caution and a need to check the account. That isn't a prediction that the physicist must be dishonest or that the entire book should be discarded.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
A considerable risk of getting some historical facts wrong fits the author's warning that people “often” remember preferred versions of events. Risk is not certainty, and some facts is not the whole account. The strength of the wording still leaves room for much of the book to be accurate; it explains why verification matters.
- B
Personal recollections can supply information and perspective beyond the public record. The author doesn't say they merely duplicate it. Nor does the argument depend on every public record being unbiased.
- C
We aren't told how often historians use autobiographical sources. A warning about how to check a source doesn't establish that the source is rarely used.
- D
No distinction makes this kind of source suitable for entertainment history but unsuitable for science. The concern is the person's relationship to the events, not the academic field involved.
- E
This removes the very safeguard the author calls the biographer's duty: verifying as much of the account as possible. Expertise or fame doesn't establish that the physicist's personal memories need no checking.
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