Time to unfriend Facebook?
For the past 18 months, communicating the findings of science to the world has hit what sometimes seems like an all-time low. Never mind the years of failure in convincing much of the public about climate change; the pandemic has revealed shocking ineptness(拙劣)by the scientific establishment at conveying messages about masks, vaccination, or the dangers of consuming horse drugs and aquarium cleaners—even in the face of a rising death toll from COVID-19. One puzzling element of this crisis is how social media has been skillfully exploited by antiscience forces. Given all of this, what is the right move for science communication as it relates to social media? Unfriend Facebook or beat it at its own game?
A few months ago, New York Times reporters Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel published An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination, in which they explored how the world’s largest social network, Facebook, fills its coffers by exploiting the viral spread of misinformation while trying to convince everyone of its noble mission to connect the world. Kang told me that she believes the algorithms and business practices of Facebook and other social media companies that encourage misinformation erect huge barriers, keeping people from paying attention to authoritative scientific information. Her ideas for combating this begin with understanding two kinds of misinformation that propagate through these powerful social networks. One is the news that is blatantly wrong. These posts are sometimes taken down but mostly flagged by Facebook’s algorithms with a disclaimer, which most people ignore. This has only a minor effect on stopping their spread. Kang sees an even bigger problem: the misinformation that arises from conversational posts among individuals. This kind of informal misinformation is frustrating because it’s not easy to police the people you know from saying crazy things on Facebook. The result is that both kinds of misinformation tend to rise to the top of Facebook’s news feeds because they get more engagement than posts about recent research findings reported in scholarly scientific articles or even in the mainstream press.
Communicating about research in real time is hard because science is always a work in progress, with caveats and answers that are not always definitive. That doesn’t translate well to social media or Facebook’s algorithms that determine which posts to promote. “Oftentimes that kind of content just does not work well in terms of engagement,” Kang said, “because it’s not the kind of stuff that people will immediately try to share.” The antiscience opposition doesn’t care about the caveats. Kang pointed out that “super figures” on social media, such as Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino, have built up a loyal following of people who will believe them no matter what.
As tempting as it may be for frustrated scientists to simply delete their Facebook accounts and avoid this dreck, Kang believes that a better approach for them is to engage more aggressively by being “out there,” competing for people’s attention by the same rules. Refusing to play hardball on the social media field is not serving science or society well. The pandemic has seen the rise of numerous scientists on Twitter who have amassed relatively large followings, but their presence on Facebook is much smaller. Although Twitter is a powerful platform for political messages that get liked and retweeted, people tend to trust individuals they know on Facebook, making it powerful for changing hearts and minds. To do battle in this arena, science will need to find its own super figures who can compete directly with the Shapiros and Bonginos of the antiscience world. Some of these new figures might be practicing scientists, and some might be science communicators. What is crucial is a knack for cutting through the caveats and conditions and forcefully conveying the bottom line. Like their opponents, they need to be adept at strategically exploiting the algorithms that can push a post to the forefront or bury it in the never-ending racket.
Since the end of World War II, scientists have stick to the idea that if they stay objective and state the science, then the rest of the world will follow. As the pandemic cycles on, it’s time to face the fact that this old notion is naive.
1. Correct science information can’t convey to the public because .| A．The scientists are incapable. |
| B．The government doesn’t want to alarm the public. |
| C．The organization which against science is too strong. |
| D．The public are not willing to receive the information. |
| A．We shouldn’t use Facebook. |
| B．Most information released on Facebook is unreal. |
| C．Scientists on Facebook are frequently banned to post their thoughts. |
| D．Facebook is becoming a tool of scientists. |
| A．By using misleading algorithms. |
| B．By deleting the posts of some scientists’. |
| C．By stopping their services. |
| D．By setting obstacles caused by information asymmetry(信息不对称). |
| A．The government should not intervene the activities of netizens. |
| B．Facebook should relax their control towards the information about the pandemic. |
| C．It is ridiculous for the society to ban the useful and trustworthy messages. |
| D．The government should publish things about pandemic to comfort the public. |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】What happens when we experience emotions?
In brief, emotional responses have four parts. There is a bodily (physiological) response, an interpretation in the mind, feelings, and an effect on behaviour. These do not happen in any special order - they happen at the same time and affect each other.
To understand the physiological response, imagine you are frightened by an aggressive, noisy dog. Your brain sends messages throughout your body. It does this by releasing a chemical called adrenaline, which the blood carries to other parts of the body. Then, the bodily sensations of being frightened begin. Blood drains from your stomach (giving a feeling we describe as a "knot in the stomach"). The blood vessels（血管）in the face become narrower (which makes you become white). Similar processes exist for other emotions.
The second aspect of emotion is interpretation in the ind of events and feelings. This is both conscious and unconscious. In fact, the more you think about the dog, the more frightened you become. Thinking like this sends both your feelings and your physical arousal to new heights.
Finally, emotions can also affect behavior.
| A．The “feeling” aspect of emotions comes from two sources. |
| B．We will illustrate this process with the most carefully studied of all emotions: fear. |
| C．In response to the aggressive dog, this could be the so-called "fight-or-flight" response which appears to be part of our biology. |
| D．We should make clear, however, that emotions are not completely fixed by our biology. |
| E．With anger, for example, more blood flows to the hands, and more energy is released. |
| F．Fear, for example, undoubtedly helped people thousands of years ago to respond to dangerous situations. |
【推荐2】Learned optimism(乐观主义) is about developing the ability to view the world from a positive point of view.
According to research, in addition to being partly hereditary(遗传的),optimism levels are also influenced by childhood experiences. Research suggests that it may be beneficial to teach kids optimism skills late enough in childhood, but before the arrival of puberty(青春期).
| A．There is an effective approach to becoming optimistic. |
| B．There are many benefits of becoming an optimistic person. |
| C．They don’t let it influence their beliefs about their abilities in other areas. |
| D．Optimists, on the other hand, expect that good things will happen to them. |
| E．Next, try to consider all of the times that you did successfully finish your workout. |
| F．This is because kids have skills to think about their own thoughts during this period. |
| G．Additionally, optimism can also help you maintain motivation when pursuing goals. |
【推荐3】Darwin’s theory has stood the test of time, yet remains a theory. Since the evolutionary time scale is so immense, it’s impossible to provide absolute proof that natural selection is responsible for every life form on this planet.
On the other hand, many people have absolute faith in the story of creation, as told in the Bible and other creation myths. It’s not wrong to believe in creation stories. And it’s not wrong to be convinced by Darwin’s theory of evolution. One attitude is based on belief, the other is based on an assessment of evidence.
Darwin and Mendel —who both lived in the 1800s — gave us an understanding of the twin worlds of evolution and genetics.
| A．Darwin realized that individuals differ within varieties as species. |
| B．Charles was sensitive about the feelings of any animal he collected. |
| C．Mendel is now recognized as the father of the science of genetics. |
| D．There are countless gaps in the fossil record. |
| E．It’s also supported by a vast body of scientific evidence. |
| F．For most species, evolution happens over millions of years. |
【推荐1】Smartphone Bans in School
Today's students all over the world are losing an hour a week of productivity due to their smartphone activity.
That is what two researchers from the London School of Economics are arguing with their new study that examined 130,000 students in 91 British schools that employed various smartphone-use policies. Then, they looked at how their respective students performed in 16-year-olds' national exams.
In what may not come as a surprise to some, researchers Richard Murphy and Louis-Philippe Beland found that as schools' phone policies evolved since 2001, with some choosing to completely ban smartphones, school test scores improved by an average of 6.4 percent. The increase in scores from underachieving students was even more significant as they saw their scores increase by an average of 14 percent.
“The results suggest that low-achieving students are more likely to be distracted by the presence of mobile phones, while high achievers can focus in the classroom regardless of the mobile phone policy," the researchers told CNN. "We found the effect of banning phones for these students was the same as an additional hour a week in school, or increasing the school year by five days."
Professor Murphy and Beland said their study does not mean that smartphones and other technology have no place in assisting learning.
“There are, however, potential drawbacks to new technologies," they told CNN, citing the temptation to text, play games or chat on social media. Therefore, smartphones will not be completely out of classrooms anytime soon. Smartphone ownership among young people and children has skyrocketed in the past few years. Pew Research and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University reported that as of 2013, 78 percent of teens aged 12 to 17 owned a cellphone, 47 percent of which were smartphones.
The use of smartphones in schools is a controversial topic. Parents want to be able to reach their children while teachers complain about the effect they have on classes.
In March, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ended a decade-long city-wide ban on smartphones in public schools and left them to make up their own rules.
But Murphy and Beland said the decision may not have a good result.
“Schools could significantly reduce the education achievement gap by prohibiting mobile phone use in schools. So by allowing phones in schools, New York may unintentionally increase the inequalities of outcomes.”
1. Which of the following is TRUE about the research?| A．It examined 130,000 underachieving students. |
| B．It proves that smartphones are no good for students' studies. |
| C．Smartphone ownership among teens aged 12 to 17 amounted to about 50 percent. |
| D．In schools with smartphone bans, scores of the underachieving students increased by 14%. |
| A．Improved. | B．Interested. | C．Assisted. | D．Affected. |
| A．lose about an hour every day |
| B．relatively lose five days for learning |
| C．increase their scores by an average of 6.4 percent |
| D．decrease their scores by an average of 14 percent |
| A．Smartphone bans in schools are beneficial. |
| B．Smartphones cause students many problems. |
| C．Some students use smartphones too much. |
| D．Heavy smartphone use can harm students' learning abilities. |
Although being famous might sound like a dream come true, today's stars, feeling like zoo animals, face pressures that few of us can imagine. They are at the center of much of the world's attention. Paparazzi(狗仔队) camp outside their homes, cameras ready. Tabloids(小报) publish thrilling stories about their personal lives. Just imagine not being able to do anything without being photographed or interrupted for a signature!
According to psychologist Christina Villarreal, celebrities—famous people—worry constantly about their public appearance. Eventually, they start to lose track of who they really are, seeing themselves the way their fans imagine them, not as the people they were before everyone knew their names. “Over time，” Villarreal says, “they feel separated and alone.”
The phenomenon of tracking celebrities has been around for ages. In the 4th century B．C., painters followed Alexander the Great into battle, hoping to picture his victories for his admirers. When Charles Dickens visited America in the 19th century, his soldout readings attracted thousands of fans, leading him to complain(抱怨) about his lack of privacy. Tabloids of the 1920s and 1930s ran articles about filmstars in much the same way that modern tabloids and websites do.
Being a public figure today, however, is a lot more difficult than it used to be. Superstars cannot move about without worrying about photographers with modern cameras. When they say something silly or do something ridiculous, there is always the Internet to spread the news in minutes and keep their “story” alive forever.
If fame is so troublesome, why aren't all celebrities running away from it? The answer is there are still ways to deal with it. Some stars stay calm by surrounding themselves with trusted friends and family or by escaping to remote places away from big cities. They focus not on how famous they are but on what they love to do or whatever made them famous in the first place.
Sometimes a few celebrities can get a little justice. Still, even stars who enjoy full justice often complain about how hard their lives are. They are tired of being famous already.
1. It can be learned from the passage that stars today ________.
| A．are often misunderstood by the public |
| B．can no longer have their privacy protected |
| C．spend too much on their public appearance |
| D．care little about how they have come into fame |
| A．Great heroes of the past were generally admired. |
| B．The problem faced by celebrities has a long history. |
| C．Wellknown actors are usually targets of tabloids. |
| D．Works of popular writers often have a lot of readers. |
| A．Availability of modern media. |
| B．Inadequate social recognition. |
| C．Lack of favorable chances. |
| D．Huge population of fans. |
| A．Sincere. | B．Sceptical. |
| C．Disapproving. | D．Sympathetic. |
【推荐3】A supermarket checkout assistant was praised as striking a blow for (拥护)modern manners and a return to the age of politeness after refusing to serve a shopper who was talking on her mobile phone.
Sainbury’s was forced to apologize to the customer who complained when she was told her goods would not be scanned unless she hung up. Jo Clark, 26, said, “I don’t know what she was playing at. I couldn’t believe how rude she was. When did she have the right to give me a lecture on checkout etiquette (礼节)? I won’t be shopping there again.
But users of social media sites and Internet forums were very angry that the store gave in and the public appeared to be rallying (支持) behind the angry checkout worker. “Perhaps this is a turning point for mobile phone users everywhere. When chatting, keep your eyes on the folk around you. That includes people trying to serve you, other road and pavement users and especially people behind you on the stairs,” was a typical post.
“It’s about time checkout staff fought back at these people incessantly chattering on their phones. They can drive anyone crazy. It’s rude and annoying. I often want to grab someone’s phone and throw it as far as I can, and I am not even a checkout girl, just a passer-by,” said another.
WillNorman of The Young Foundation said that the majority of people still valued good manners very highly, despite growing pressures from work, mobility and technology. “Being civil to each other is part of the oil which makes communities work. In our research taxi drivers and shop workers described being invisible which is fine as a one-off but day after day it makes people feel undervalued and undermined. It is quite simply rude,” he said. “New rules and codes of conduct take a while to develop and we are still in a development phase for mobile phones,” he added.
Siobhan Freegard, founder of parenting site Netmums.com said, “While clearly this checkout operator doesn’t have the authority to order customers to switch off the phone, you can see why she felt so frustrated. No matter how busy you are, life is nicer when you and those around you have good manners.”
1. According to Jo Clark, the checkout assistant ________.| A．lacked the knowledge of checkout manners |
| B．played with a mobile phone while at work |
| C．deserved praise for her modern manners |
| D．had no right to forbid her to use her mobile phone |
| A．are used to chatting on their mobile phones |
| B．are driven crazy by constant mobile calls |
| C．seemed to support the checkout assistant |
| D．ignored the existence of mobile phone users |
| A．people are confused about what good manners are |
| B．technology makes people feel undervalued |
| C．the use of mobile phones should be reduced |
| D．good mobile phone manners are still developing |
| A．how we talk on mobile phones while shopping |
| B．what good manners mobile phone users should have |
| C．when we can develop new rules for mobile phone users |
| D．whether it is rude to talk on your mobile phone while shopping |
【推荐1】Marilu Arce loves her job, but for a time she considered leaving. The traffic-plagued commute from her home to her office, nearly two hours each way, meant her daughters couldn’t enroll in after school activities because she couldn’t get home in time to take them.
Then her employer adopted a policy permitting her to work from home two days a week, and “I feel like it changed my life,” she said. Her stress level has dropped. Her daughters are thrilled. She likes her job more. That’s the type of reaction Arce’s boss likes to hear as the company measures the success of the work-from-home policy which was instituted three years ago in hopes of improving employee retention. So far, it seems to be working: turnover was less than five percent last year—its lowest ever.
Flexible work policies top employee wish lists when they look for a job, and employers increasingly have been offering them. Studies have shown working remotely increases employee engagement, but in moderation because there is still value in the relationships nurtured when colleagues are face to face. The key, advocates of flexible work policies say, is to match the environment with the type of work that needs to be done.
The flexibility hasn’t hurt productivity, which is up 50 percent. There is “something lost” when colleagues don’t gather at the water cooler, but it’s outweighed by the retention and happiness gains, he said. As jobs that require physical work decline, thanks to technological advances, life superficially appears to get better. Consumers benefit in the form of cheaper prices. Labor-saving appliances all make things easier and suggest that even more and better benefits are on the horizon. But is something lost?
Talk long enough to the most accomplished academics, they will brag about a long-ago college summer job waiting tables or repairing hiking trails. They might praise the installer who redid their kitchen. There seems to be a human instinct to want to do physical work. The proliferation of hard-work reality-television programming reflects this apparent need. Indeed, the more we have become immobile and urbanized, the more we tune in to watch reality television’s truckers, loggers, farmers, drillers and rail engineers. In a society that supposedly despises menial jobs, the television ratings for such programmes suggest that lots of Americans enjoy watching people of action, who work with their hands.
Physical work, in its eleventh hour within a rapidly changing Western culture, still intrigues us in part because it remains the foundation for 21st century complexity. Before any of us can teach, write or speculate, we must first have food, shelter and safety. And for a bit longer, that will require some people to cut grapes and nail two-by-sixes. No apps or 3D printers exist to produce brown rice. Physical labour also promotes human versatility: Those who do not do it, or who do not know how to do it, become divorced from—and, at the same time, dependent on—labourers. Lawyers, accountants and journalists living in houses with yards and driving cars to work thus count on a supporting infrastructure of electricians, landscapers and mechanics. In that context, physical labour can provide independence, at least in a limited sense of not being entirely reliant on a host of hired workers.
1. The author mentions the example of Arce to show that________.| A．she dislikes the present job for the long commuting time |
| B．she is having trouble balancing work and school life |
| C．people usually don’t work hard outside office |
| D．employers are facing the problem of staff drain |
| A．it helps to increase job satisfaction for the employees |
| B．it improves harmonious relationship among colleagues |
| C．the decline in physical work gives employees more mobility |
| D．employees are entitled to request it according to their work |
| A．They entertain those employees burned out with overwork. |
| B．People can learn some basic labour skills from these programmes. |
| C．There’s an ongoing need for physical labour skills that technology doesn’t possess. |
| D．They offer instructive information for both employers and employees. |
| A．The Emergence of Alternative Work Arrangements |
| B．The Rise of Automation, the Decline in Need for Labour |
| C．Time to Rethink in the Face of the Evolution of Work |
| D．New Challenges for Today’s Employers and Academics |
【推荐2】On Wednesday, two things happened. In Syria, 80 people were killed by government airstrikes. Meanwhile, in Florida, Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched and fired a sports car into space. Guess which story has dominated mainstream news sites?
The launch of Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket, the most powerful ever launched by a private company, went off successfully. Musk sent his cherry-red Tesla roadster running toward Mars, launching “a new space age”. The event attracted phenomenal publicity and made the rocket launch a masterstroke of advertising for Tesla.
Meanwhile, in Syria, where hundreds of thousands of refugees may be forced to return to unsafe homes, a UN human rights coordinator for Syria said despondently(沮丧地) that he was no longer sure why he bothers to videotape the effects of bombing, since nobody ever pays attention. He wondered what level of violence it would take to make the world care.
There is, perhaps, no better way to appreciate the tragedy of 21st-century global inequality than by watching a billionaire spend $90m launching a $100,000 car into space.
Musk said he wanted to participate in a space race because “races are exciting” and that while strapping his car to a rocket may be “silly and fun … silly and fun things are important”. Thus, anyone who mentions the huge waste the project involves, or the various social uses to which these resources could be put, can be dismissed as a killjoy.
But one doesn’t have to hate fun to question the justification for pursuing a costly new space race at exactly this moment. If we examine the situation honestly, it becomes hard to defend a project like this.
A mission to Mars does indeed sound exciting, but it’s important to have our priorities straight. First, perhaps we could make it so that a child no longer dies of malaria every two minutes. Or we could try to address the level of poverty in Alabama which has become so extreme that the UN investigator did not believe it could occur in a first-world country. Perhaps when violence, poverty and disease are solved, then we can head for the stars.
Many might think that what Elon Musk chooses to do with his billions is Elon Musk’s business alone. If he wanted to spend all his money on medicine for children, that would be nice, but if he’d like to spend it making big explosions and sending his convertible on a million-mile space voyage, that’s his right.
But Musk is only rich enough to afford these money-consuming projects because we have allowed social inequalities to arise in the first place. If wealth were actually distributed fairly in this country, nobody would be in a position to fund his own private space program.
Elon Musk is right: silly and fun things are important. But some of them are an indefensible waste of resources. While there are still humanitarian crises such as that in Syria, nobody can justify vast spending on rocketry experiments.
1. Why does the writer mention the two pieces of news at the beginning of the passage?| A．To highlight the significance of SpaceX’s successful launch of a rocket and a car into space. |
| B．To illustrate the inequality of wealth distribution and the consequent inequality of attention distribution. |
| C．To appeal to the government for more attention to the air strikes and refugee crisis in Syria. |
| D．To find out which news dominated the mainstream news sites. |
| A．Because nobody appreciated his work and all the efforts he made. |
| B．Because the violence in Syria is not serious enough to make the world care. |
| C．Because however hard he tried, nobody seemed to care about the situation in Syria. |
| D．Because he had great difficulty videotaping the effects of bombing. |
| A．The space project of SpaceX cost the government too much money. |
| B．Addressing problems of violence, poverty and diseases should be our top priority. |
| C．Space programs are a waste of money that cannot be justified. |
| D．It kills the fun to question the justification of the pursuit of space programs. |
| A．We should pay equal attention to space projects and solving social problems. |
| B．No private companies should be allowed to spend money in rocketry experiments. |
| C．The successful launch of SpaceX has distracted the world from more important things. |
| D．The money and resources used in space projects could have been used to deal with various social problems. |
【推荐3】Making employees feel happy and healthy at work is good for many businesses. But it isn’t always an easy thing. A study suggests that only 33% of the U. S. employees consider themselves fully engaged （投身于）in work, while 16% are greatly disengaged, and 51% are just showing up.
But there is an exception. When it comes to employee engagement, it seems that employees in small companies are doing better. According to the same research, the largest U. S. companies are at the lowest levels of engagement, while companies with fewer than 25 employees are at the highest. And in one recent report, 75% of small business workers surveyed said they were “very” or “extremely” satisfied with their role as a small company employee.
Unlike big companies, small companies are often short of resources but the employees can get more surprises there. Small companies offer excellent career opportunities to their employees. The bosses often know their staff very well and understand their personal needs. Employees of small companies are more likely to receive free meals, paid leave, and they can even bring their pets to work.
But of course ? there are many other draws in small businesses. One of the top draws is flexible scheduling (弹性工时). Another is being able to really see the fruits of one's labor. Besides, non-cash award is also a big draw. This could be something small that reflects employees’ interests and lifestyles.
While a parental leave might lead to some financial problems, small companies may do something to improve it. “It may be impossible for a five-person team to be reduced to four for six months,” writes Camillia Velasquez, head of HR management platform, Justworks. “But it could be possible to allow new parents to take on reduced hours in a work-from-home environment. ” This kind of method has been realized in some small companies.
1. What can we know about employees in big and small companies?| A．Employees can develop better in small companies. |
| B．Employees can earn more money in small companies. |
| C．Employees in big companies are hard to be satisfied. |
| D．Employees in small companies are more engaged in work. |
| A．Working for small companies has many benefits. |
| B．All the employers in small companies know every staff member very well. |
| C．Staff in small companies may face many challenges. |
| D．Staff in big companies have more material benefits. |
| A．Employers in small companies have more choices. |
| B．Small companies have more attractions to employees. |
| C．Employees of small companies may have higher salaries. |
| D．Employees of small companies have fixed working time. |
| A．Small companies may have more employees with much happiness. |
| B．Big companies should learn from some small companies. |
| C．Employees should have their own hobbies and lifestyles. |
| D．Employers should pay more attention to the staff’s needs. |
