A logical completion question tests whether you can draw a conclusion from several clues without claiming too much. Read the words leading into the blank, then put each earlier clue in a few words. When the text gives a change over time and a caution, ask what changed and what remains unknown. Use both to predict the smallest supported conclusion. Reject endings that claim more than the evidence can show.
Hints
- Hint 1
Go back to the applications from before the reforms. Compare the name on an application with the evidence kept alongside it.
- Hint 2
Look at what changed and what stayed steady after the reforms. How do those details affect what the rise in women's names can show?
- Hint 3
Use Voss's final caution to set the limit of your prediction. What can the findings show, and what do they leave unknown?
Step-by-step
Compare the records across the reforms
Step 1Find what the early patent names missed
Before the reforms, applications named only a husband despite diagrams signed by his wife and journal reports identifying her as the main designer. Could those names serve as a proxy, a stand-in measure, for how much women invented? A woman could invent without being named on the patent, so that's one clue for the conclusion the blank asks for.
- Step 2
Explain the rise after reform
Immediately after the reforms, the share of patents naming women increased sharply, while both the overall patenting rate and the distribution of patents across technological fields stayed nearly the same. Does that prove women suddenly did much more inventing? The timing instead fits women becoming more visible in the records once they could control intellectual property. The steady totals and mix of fields support a change in credit, especially when we connect them to the wives whose earlier design work was recorded.
- Step 3
Limit the conclusion
How far can we take the conclusion? Voss says the evidence cannot establish exactly how many women were inventors, so we can find missing names without knowing their full number. The promise of reasonable precision says the count would be fairly accurate, but the passage gives no way to check that.
- Step 4
Choose the supported link
The reliable proxy ending ignores the missing wives, while not whether women's contributions appeared conflicts with the rise in women's names. Which ending explains that gap without claiming a total? The ending about legal restrictions explains why the early counts missed some women's work: legal control helped determine who was credited on the patent. Choice B.