問題詳情


(B)A simple idea underpins science: “trust, but verify.” Results should always be subject tochallenge from experiment. That simple but powerful idea has generated a vast body ofknowledge. Since its birth in the 17th century, modern science has changed the world beyondrecognition, and overwhelmingly for the better.But success can breed complacency. Modern scientists are doing too much trusting andnot enough verifying—to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity. Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis.A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of the published researchcannot be replicated. Even that may be optimistic. Last year researchers at one biotech firm,Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research.Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarlyimportant papers. A leading computer scientist frets that three-quarters of papers in his subfieldare bunk. In 2000-2010, roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on researchthat was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties.Even when flawed research does not put people’s lives at risk, it squanders money and theefforts of some of the world’s best minds. The opportunity costs of stymied progress are hardto quantify, but they are likely to be vast. And they could be rising.One reason is the competitiveness of science. In the 1950s, when modern academicresearch took shape after its successes in World War II, it was still a rarefied pastime. Theentire club of scientists numbered a few hundred thousand. As their ranks have swelled, to 6 to 7 million active researchers on the latest reckoning, scientists have lost their taste forself-policing and quality control. The obligation to “publish or perish” has come to rule overacademic life. Verification does little to advance a researcher’s career. And without verification,dubious findings live on to mislead.Careerism also encourages exaggeration and the cherry-picking of results. In order tosafeguard their exclusivity, the leading journals impose high rejection rates: in excess of 90%of submitted manuscripts. The most striking findings have the greatest chance of making itonto the page. Little wonder that one in three researchers knows of a colleague who has peppedup a paper by, say, excluding inconvenient data from results “based on a gut feeling.”Conversely, failures to prove a hypothesis are rarely even offered for publication, let aloneaccepted. “Negative results” now account for only 14% of published papers, down from 30%in 1990. Yet knowing what is false is as important to science as knowing what is true. Thefailure to report failures means that researchers waste money and effort exploring blind alleysalready investigated by other scientists.All this makes a shaky foundation for an enterprise dedicated to discovering the truthabout the world. What might be done to shore it up? One priority should be for all disciplinesto follow the example of those that have done most to tighten standards.Ideally, research protocols should be registered in advance and monitored in virtualnotebooks. This would curb the temptation to fiddle with the experiment’s design midstream so as to make the results look more substantial than they are. Where possible, trial data alsoshould be open for other researchers to inspect and test. Journals should allocate space for“uninteresting” work, and grant-givers should set aside money to pay for it.Science still commands enormous—if sometimes bemused—respect. But its privilegedstatus is founded on the capacity to be right most of the time and to correct its mistakes when itgets things wrong. The false trails laid down by shoddy research are an unforgivable barrier tounderstanding.
72. Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
(A) Trust, But Verify
(B) How Science Goes Wrong
(C) Science: Problems and Retrospection
(D) What Makes Science A Respected Discipline?

參考答案

答案：B
難度：適中0.44
統計：A(14),B(22),C(9),D(2),E(0)

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