has to be 'seriously qualified'

Question

Hi,Could any one of you please help me with the below:when you say 'something has to be seriously qualified' what does it mean?Thanks,Suneel

Philip · Accepted Answer

Welcome to the forums, innamuris!
Without context, it is often impossible to offer a valid answer.
Seriously is generally associated with a negative adjective [seriously ill, seriously wounded, seriously jealous]. This sounds like a person playing with the language somewhat.

Innamuris · Answer

Thanks for your response Philip. Here is the context where i came across 'seriously qualified'.

The reluctance to—abandon this hypothesis, however well it explains specific processes, impeded new research, and for many years antigens and antibodies dominated the thoughts of immunologists so completely that those immunologists overlooked certain difficulties. Perhaps the primary difficulty with the antigen-antibody explanation is the informational problem of how an antigen is recognized and how a structure exactly complementary to it is then synthesized. When molecular biologists discovered, moreover, that such information cannot flow from protein to protein, but only from nucleic acid to protein, the theory that an antigen itself provided the mold that directed the synthesis of an antibody had to be seriously qualified. The attempts at qualification and the information provided by research in molecular biology led scientists to realize that a second immunological reaction is mediated through the lymphocytes that are hostile to and bring about the destruction of the antigen. This type of immunological response is called cell-mediated immunity.

CalifJim · Answer

Welcome to English Forums!
Be sure to include the full context when asking a question.

Without more context, to me has to be seriously qualified means that many conditions and/or limitations have to be added to what has been said before it becomes a truly accurate statement.
For example, if someone says, "Eating cheesecake will make you fat", you can respond that you think that the statement has to be seriously qualified, because it depends on how much cheesecake you eat, what kind of cheesecake it is (It may be fat-free cheesecake), and various other factors.
CJ
Edit: I wrote this before seeing your last post. It turns out that this is the meaning I had in mind.

Innamuris · Answer

Hi CalifJim,

Thanks very much..... you cleared my doubt !!!

has to be 'seriously qualified'

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