1 . 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.
1. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?| A．Scientists are expected to persistently devoted to exploration of reality. |
| B．The research findings fail to achieve the expected effect. |
| C．Hypotheses are modified to highlight the experiments’ results. |
| D．The amount of science that does replicate is comforting. |
| A．The public. | B．The incentive initiators. |
| C．The peer researchers. | D．The high-impact journal editors. |
| A．Good scientists excel in seeking resources and securing research positions. |
| B．Competition for resources pushes researchers to publish in a more productive way. |
| C．All the credentialed scholars and researchers will take up university professorships. |
| D．The number of publication reveals how scientists are bitterly exploited. |
| A．High-impact journals are encouraged to reform the incentives for publication. |
| B．The peer-review process is supposed to scale up inspection of scientific fraud. |
| C．Researchers are motivated to get actively involved in gaming the current system. |
| D．Career incentives for scientists are expected to consider their personal intention. |
The fairest woman in the world was Helen.
So matters stood when Paris gave the golden apple to Aphrodite. The Goddess of Love and Beauty knew very well where the most beautiful woman on earth was
Menelaus returned to find Helen gone, and he called upon all of Greece to help recover her. The chieftains responded
Army had arrived, the King was plowing a field and sowing it with salt
Achilles was kept back by his mother. She sent him to the court of Lycomedes and made him wear women’s clothing, hiding him among the maidens. Odysseus was dispatched by the chieftains to bring him out. Disguised as a peddler he went to the court
So the great fleet made ready.
Human memory is notoriously (众所周知地) unreliable. Even people with the sharpest facial recognition skills can only remember so much.
It’s tough to quantify how good a person is
Machines aren’t limited this way. Give the right computer a massive database of faces, and it can process what it sees – then recognize a face it
The thing is, machines still have limitations when it comes to facial recognition. And scientists are only just beginning to understand what those constraints are.
As the databases grew, machine accuracy dipped across the board. Algorithms
Machines also had difficulty adjusting for people who look a lot alike –either doppelgangers (长相极相似的人), whom the machine would have trouble
| A．Whatever | B．However | C．Though | D．Whether |
| A．which…that | B．why…that | C．which…which | D．that…which |
| A．struck, were trapped | B．being struck, trapped |
| C．struck, having been trapped | D．having been struck ; were trapped |
Billionaires Race to Space
In late July 2021, Jeff Bezos achieved an out-of-this-world ambition. The billionaire founder of Amazon
“Best day ever,” Bezos said over the radio to mission control after landing safely back on Earth,
Bezos wasn’t the first billionaire to set his sights on space. Nor was he the first
Critics say that the money
But supporters of commercial space travel argue that it does benefit humanity. Personal funds
“The dangerous thing about lying is people don’t understand how the act changes us,” says Dan Ariely, behavioural psychologist at Duke University. Psychologists have documented children lying as early as the age of two. Lying is even considered
According to Ariely, lying takes work. In studies, he gave subjects a chance to deceive for monetary gains while examining their brains in a functional MRI machine. Some people told the truth instantly. But others opted to lie, and they showed increased activity in their frontal parietal(颅腔壁的)control network, which is involved in complex thinking. It suggested that they were deciding between truth and dishonesty, and after thinking about it,
External conditions also matter in terms of when and how often we lie. We are more likely to lie, research shows, when we see others being dishonest. And we are less likely to lie when we think others are watching. “We
In a 2016 study, Ariely and colleagues showed how dishonesty alters people’s brains, making it easier to tell lies in the future. When people told a lie, the scientists noticed a burst of activity in their amygdala, a crucial part of the brain that produces fear and guilt. But when scientists had their subjects
9 . Gone are the days when a mother’s place was in the home: in Britain women with children are now as likely to be in paid work as their unburdened sisters. Many put their little darlings in day care long before they start school. Mindful that a poor start can spoil a person’s chances of success later in life, the state has intervened ever more closely in how babies and toddlers are looked after. Inspectors call not only at nurseries but also at homes where youngsters are minded; three-year-olds follow the national curriculum. Child care has increasingly become a profession.
For years after the government first began in 2001 to twist the arms of anyone who looked after an unrelated child to register with the schools, the numbers so doing fell. Kind but clueless neighbours stopped looking after little ones, who were instead herded into formal nurseries or handed over to one of the ever-fewer registered child-minders. The decline in the number of people taking in children now appears to have halted. According to data released by the Office for Standards in Education on October 27th, the number of registered child-minders reached its lowest point in September 2010 and has since recovered slightly.
The new lot are certainly better qualified. In 2010 fully 82% of nursery workers held diplomas notionally equivalent to A-levels, the university-entrance exams taken mostly by 18-year-olds, up from 56% seven years earlier, says Anand Shukla of the Daycare Trust, a charity. Nurseries staffed by university graduates tend to be rated highest by inspectors, increasing their appeal to the pickiest parents. As a result, more graduates are being recruited.
But professionalization has also pushed up the price of child care, defying even the economic depression. A survey by the Daycare Trust finds that a full-time nursery place in England for a child aged under two, who must be intensively supervised, costs £194 ($310) per week, on average. Prices in London and the south-east are far higher. Parents in Britain spend more on child care than anywhere else in the world, according to the OECD, a think-tank. Some 68% of a typical second earner's net income is spent on freeing her to work, compared with an OECD average of 52%.
The price of child care is not only eye-watering, but has also become a barrier to work. Soon after it took power the coalition government pledged to ensure that people are better off in work than on benefits, but a recent survey by Save the Children, a charity, found that the high cost of day care prevented a quarter of low-paid workers from returning to their jobs once they had started a family. The government pays for free part-time nursery places for three-and four-year-olds, and contributes towards day-care costs for younger children from poor areas. Alas, extending such an aid during stressful economic times would appear to be anything but child’s play.
1. Which of the following is true according to the first paragraph?| A．Nursery education plays a leading role in one’s personal growth. |
| B．Pregnant women have to work to lighten families’ economic burden. |
| C．Children in nursery have to take uniform nation courses. |
| D．The supervision of the state makes child care professional. |
| A．the registered child-minders are required to take the university-entrance exams |
| B．the number of registered child-minders has been declining since 2001 |
| C．anyone who looks after children at home must register with the schools |
| D．the growing recognition encourages more graduates to work as child-minders |
| A．prevents mothers from getting employed |
| B．may further depress the national economy |
| C．makes many families live on benefits |
| D．is far more than parents can afford |
| A．Objective. | B．Skeptical. | C．Supportive. | D．Biased. |
| A．The professionalization of child care has pushed up its price. |
| B．The high cost of child nursing makes many mothers give up their jobs. |
| C．The employment of more graduates makes nurseries more popular. |
| D．Parents in Britain pay most for child nursing throughout the world. |
| A．Confused by the map |
| B．As he had been confused by the map |
| C．Having been confused by the map |
| D．He had been confused by the map |
