In the faraway land, there was a beautiful kingdom with its unique rule. The rule said, everyone may become the king, with all of his rights to govern the country for five years. After that he must be caught, his body will be tied and he will be thrown away to a remote island where the jungle is thick and there are plenty of wild animals and no human.

Then, one by one, people became the king. The first man said, “OK, I’m ready to be the king.” And he became a king for five years. What he did in his five years was enjoying his position. He threw big parties, went to many beautiful places, married many women, collected many luxurious things and did other things that pleased himself. Those were all he did, and he never prepared anything for his future.

Every other king was the same until a young man came and declared his wish. By the constitution (宪法) he was granted his wish. He would be the king for five years before being thrown away to the island. But he thought that even if he had a happy and free life in the five years, his life as a king would come to an end at last. He was always thinking.

And not very long after that, he made a surprising decision.

Finally, the time came when the king had to be thrown away to the island.

Yours,

Li Hua

A couple of years ago, just as I did every winter, I bagged up all the items in my closet that I no longer wore, along with the clothes my sons had outgrown. I made a call to action to all of my family and friends, asking them to do the same. It is always my hope to repurpose those things that do nothing more than take up space in our homes, things others might make better use of.

I found an old, ugly pair of hand-woven socks in one of the bags donated (捐赠) by a friend. They were an unpleasant mixture of coloured yam: orange, purple, yellow and blue. I had to decide—garbage or donation? It wasn’t like they were unusable. I imagined they were a home-made gift gone bad.

I put the ugly socks in the garbage, but ten minutes later, I took them back and put them in the donation pile. Later that afternoon, my mother and I drove down to Madison Avenue in downtown Phoenix. Every winter we load up my Jeep with our own cast-offs and the donations from friends, and we take them downtown, along with food and water, to distribute (分发) them to the men and women living on the street. Sometimes I even got my boys involved.

On this particular afternoon, as Mum and I distributed warm clothes and hot food to a small crowd of people outside a local homeless shelter, I reached into the bag and pulled out the last of the donations, the ugly socks. Just as I was about to drop the socks back into the empty bag, laughing at myself for even bringing them along for the ride, a teenage boy came to me.

“Can I please have those socks?” he asked, his blue eyes sparkling in the sun. My eyebrows lifted. I was ashamed to say it but I was still a little embarrassed by the donation and disappointed that we hadn’t anything left to give him except for those socks.

“Of course,” I replied, handing the boy the thick, ugly, hand-woven socks.

“Thank you so much, Ma’am!” he smiled.

I’m writing to invite you to join us in the “Chinese speech contest for foreigners” to be held in our school

Yours sincerely,

Li Hua

“I don’t think anyone is going to send you money, Jessica. People just aren’t that kind.” said my mother. I was shocked by such a comment. “But you’re wrong. People are kind and they will be generous enough to send me money.” I argued.

Last fall, I sent 200 letters to businesses, doctors and friends asking for sponsorship so I could attend the National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine. everyone doubted my efforts, and I heard every excuse why people would be too busy to help me. “These people don’t even know you. Do you honestly think a stranger will send you money?” asked my friends. “Why put yourself through all this disappointment? Just forget it.” said my grandfather. I decided not to listen. The best thing I could do was to attend the Forum and learn more about my future career.

I waited weeks for my first response, which came from a bank. “Dear Jessica,” it read. “At this time. Our bank does not offer aid to students, but we wish you luck and success in your project.” My heart sank. I was rejected. I looked at my grandpa. “Well?” he asked. He should have been able to tell from my disappointed face. “ Here, ” I said, as I handed him the letter and locked myself in my room. But then I realized what I was doing. “It’s only one rejection,” I said to myself, “Cheer up. You will receive a letter with a check in it.”

I rushed home from school every day the next two weeks.

But one day, I came home and heard five beautiful words: Jessica, you have two letters.

8 . Why isn’t science better? Look at career incentives.

There are often substantial gaps between the idealized and actual versions of those people whose work involves providing a social good. Government officials are supposed to work for their constituents. Journalists are supposed to provide unbiased reporting and penetrating analysis. And scientists are supposed to relentlessly probe the fabric of reality with the most rigorous and skeptical of methods.

All too often, however, what should be just isn’t so. In a number of scientific fields, published findings turn out not to replicate (复制), or to have smaller effects than, what was initially claimed. Plenty of science does replicate — meaning the experiments turn out the same way when you repeat them — but the amount that doesn’t is too much for comfort.

But there are also ways in which scientists increase their chances of getting it wrong. Running studies with small samples, mining data for correlations and forming hypotheses to fit an experiment’s results after the fact are just some of the ways to increase the number of false discoveries.

It’s not like we don’t know how to do better. Scientists who study scientific methods have known about feasible remedies for decades. Unfortunately, their advice often falls on deaf ears. Why? Why aren’t scientific methods better than they are? In a word: incentives. But perhaps not in the way you think.

In the 1970s, psychologists and economists began to point out the danger in relying on quantitative measures for social decision-making. For example, when public schools are evaluated by students’ performance on standardized tests, teachers respond by teaching “to the test”. In turn, the test serves largely as of how well the school can prepare students for the test.

We can see this principle—often summarized as “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”—playing out in the realm of research. Science is a competitive enterprise. There are far more credentialed (授以证书的) scholars and researchers than there are university professorships or comparably prestigious research positions. Once someone acquires a research position, there is additional competition for tenure (终身教授) grant funding, and support and placement for graduate students. Due to this competition for resources, scientists must be evaluated and compared. How do you tell if someone is a good scientist?

An oft-used metric (标准，度量) is the number of publications one has in peer-reviewed journals, as well as the status of those journals. Metrics like these make it straightforward to compare researchers whose work may otherwise be quite different. Unfortunately, this also makes these numbers susceptible to exploitation.

If scientists are motivated to publish often and in high-impact journals, we might expect them to actively try to game the system (钻空子). And certainly, some do—as seen in recent high-profile cases of scientific fraud (欺诈). If malicious (恶意的) fraud is the prime concern, then perhaps the solution is simply heightened alertness.

However, most scientists are, I believe, genuinely interested in learning about the world, and honest. The problem with incentives is that they can shape cultural norms without any intention on the part of individuals.