Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.

<passage>:
Booze You Can Use I love beer, but lately I've been wondering: Am I getting full value for my beer dollar? As I've stocked up on microbrews and fancy imports, I've told myself that their taste is deeper, richer, more complicated, more compelling--and therefore worth the 50 percent to 200 percent premium they command over cheap mass products or even mainstream Bud. And yet, I've started to wonder, is this just costly snobbery? If I didn't know what I was drinking, could I even tell whether it was something from Belgium, vs. something from Pabst? I'm afraid we'll never know the answer to that exact question, since I'm not brave enough to expose my own taste to a real test. But I'm brave enough to expose my friends'. This summer, while working at Microsoft, I put out a call for volunteers for a "science of beer" experiment. Testing candidates had to meet two criteria: 1) they had to like beer and 2) they had to think they knew the difference between mass products and high-end microbrews. Twelve tasters were selected, mainly on the basis of essays detailing their background with beer. A few were selected because they had been bosses in the Microsoft department where I worked. All were software managers or developers all were male, but I repeat myself. Nearly half had grown up outside the United States or lived abroad for enough years to speak haughtily about American macrobrews. Most tasters came in talking big about the refinement of their palates. When they entered the laboratory (which mere moments before had been a Microsoft conference room), they discovered an experiment set up on the following lines: 1 Philosophy                : The experiment was designed to take place in two separate sessions. The first session, whose results are revealed here, involved beers exclusively from the lager group. Lagers are the light-colored, relatively lightly flavored brews that make up most of the vattage of beer consumption in the United States. Imported lagers include Foster's, Corona, and Heineken. Budweiser is a lager so are Coors, Miller, most light beers, and most bargain-basement beers. Beer snobs sneer at lagers, because they look so watery and because so many bad beers are in the group. But the lager test came first, for two reasons. One, lagers pose the only honest test of the ability to tell expensive from dirt-cheap beers. There are very few inexpensive nut brown ales, India pale ales, extra special bitters, or other fancy-pantsy, microbrew-style, nonlager drinks. So if you want to see whether people can taste a money difference among beers of the same type, you've got to go lager. Two, the ideal of public service requires lager coverage. This is what most people drink, so new findings about lager quality could do the greatest good for the greatest number. In the second stage of the experiment, held several weeks later, the same testers reassembled to try the fancier beers. The results of that tasting will be reported separately, once Microsoft's mighty Windows 2000-powered central computers have . 2 Materials                : Ten lagers were selected for testing, representing three distinct price-and-quality groups. Through the magic of the market, it turns out that lager prices nearly all fall into one of three ranges: b) Middle at around 80 cents per pint, or under $4 per six pack. c) Low at 50 cents to 55 cents per pint, or under $3 per six pack. The neat 6:3:2 mathematical relationship among the price groups should be noted. The high-end beers cost roughly three times as much as the cheapest ones, and twice as much as the middle range. The beers used in the experiment were as follows: High End Grolsch. Import lager (Holland). $1.67 per pint. (See an important .) Chosen for the test because of its beer-snob chic also, one of my favorite beers. Cheap also, they were just going back to software coding when they were done.) Saltines were available to cleanse the palate. The cups were red opaque plastic, so tasters could judge the beer's color only from above. There was no time limit for the tasting, apart from the two-hour limit in which we had reserved the conference room. One experimenter (the boss of most of the others there) rushed through his rankings in 10 minutes and gave the lowest overall scores. The taster who took the longest, nearly the full two hours, had the ratings that came closest to the relative price of the beers. (This man grew up in Russia.) The experimenters were asked not to compare impressions until the test was over. After tasting the beers, each taster rated beers A through J on the following standards: Price category: The tasters knew that each beer came from the expensive, medium, or cheap category--and they had to guess where A through J belonged. A rating of 3 was most expensive, 2 for average, 1 for cheap. Description: "Amusing presumption," "fresh on the palate," "crap," etc. Best and Worst: Tasters chose one Best and one Worst from the "flight" (as they would call it if this were a wine test). the embarrassment of Heineken and Miller Genuine Draft , an expensive and a medium beer, respectively, which share the cellar with the hapless Grolsch and the nearly Busch-like value of Milwaukee's Best and Schmidt's . It is safe to say that none of our testers would have confessed respect for Busch, Milwaukee's Best, or Schmidt's before the contest began. But when they didn't know what they were drinking, they found these beers much closer in quality to "best" beers than the prices would indicate. 4) Social Value for Money: the Snob-o-meter® . In addition to saying which beers they preferred, the tasters were asked to estimate whether the beers were expensive or not--in effect, to judge whether other people would like and be impressed by the beers. One taster perfectly understood the intention of this measure when he said, in comments about Beer B (Heineken), "I don't like it, but I bet it's what the snobs buy." The Snob-o-meter rating for each beer is similar to the Taste-o-meter. You start with the "group" ranking--whether the tasters thought the beer belonged in Group 1 (cheap), 2, or 3--and then divide by the price per pint. The result tells you the social-mobility power of the beer--how impressive it will seem, relative to how much it costs. The Snob-o-meter rankings are: We won't even speak of poor Grolsch or MGD any more. The story here is the amazing snob-power-per-dollar of Busch , closely followed by Schmidt's . A dollar spent on Busch gets you three times the impressiveness of a dollar spent in Grolsch, useful information when planning a party. Not everyone liked Busch--one called it "crap" another, "Water. LITE." But the magic of statistics lets us see the larger trends. 1) Buy Sam Adams when they want an individual glass of lager to be as good as it can be. 2) Buy Busch at all other times, since it gives them the maximum taste and social influence per dollar invested. The detailed rankings and comments for all tasters on all beers may be found . Next installment: fancy beers .

<question>:
What is the general tone that the author writes in?

<options>:
A They are compassionate for the testers who are confused about how to run the experiment
B They poke fun at the preferences of the participants based on their professions
C They start off very confident about their own abilities, but learn by tasting that they actually aren’t any better than the rest of the testers
D They take a serious, scientific approach because it’s mart of their market research profession

<answer>:

B