I was recently told in class that this sentence is correct:
"He reprogrammed the system, and in doing so, we lost crucial data."
It just doesn't feel right to me – my intuition is that the subject on both sides of "in doing so" should be the same. Something like "He reprogrammed the system, and in doing so, caused us to lose crucial data."
Is my intuition off, or is the original sentence wrong?
Best Answer
The conjunction and introduces a new independent clause, opening with the phrase in doing so and with we as its subject. However the subject we is not the same as the implied subject of the doing, resulting in a classic example of a dangling participle.
The OP's sentence is not as egregious as the following similar constructions found in a quick internet search, but a careful writer would probably want to rewrite it as the OP suggests: