Critics charge that the regulatory agency

Critics charge that the regulatory agency, having never defined what constitutes an untenable risk, has grown (i) _______ outside influences on that issue: several experts have (ii) ______ it recently for allowing one power plant to delay an inspection for more than six weeks despite compelling safety concerns. Blank (i): susceptible to, unaware of, irritated at Blank (ii): complimented, panned, overlooked

2 Explanations

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Amir Behani

You simply say that "susceptible to" makes sense. There is no reason why that makes sense. I think "unaware of" also makes sense; because when you are unaware of outside influences, you are likely to make such horrible risk and mistake. The question doesn't give any clue what outside influences actually is. Since there is no clue, one can say that irritated by could be true as well.

Oct 24, 2020 • Comment

Adam

We have to make inferences here, as the GRE will rarely tell you exactly what something like "outside influences" means. We have to figure it out from the context.

Here, the agency is supposed to be enforcing safety regulations. However, they did not do this in the case of the power plant. Why are they not doing their job?

If they were simply unaware of what other people thought an "untenable risk" is, why would that make them not do their job? If they weren't aware of any discussion or influences, then they should be simply doing their job.

However, if they are susceptible to outside influences, this means that they are affected by what other people have said about the definition of an "untenable risk." This can cause them to change how they do their job. If they believe it when other people say that their plant has no untenable risks, then they won't feel the need to perform the inspection.

Oct 26, 2020 • Reply

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Chris Lele