[A] For crowdfunding to work, the project needs to capture the public imagination. And not all academics are comfortable with se

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问题    [A] For crowdfunding to work, the project needs to capture the public imagination. And not all academics are comfortable with self-promotion. But with academics under increasing pressure to show how they are engaging the public with their work, crowdfunding certainly ticks the right boxes. Petts worked with the crowdfunding platform DigVentures, which refers to its work as "citizen science". He was joined by some of his backers on the Iindisfarne dig and shared finds online, in real time. "You couldn’t get a better example of public engagement," he says.
   [B] But it’s early days and difficult to predict the scale and impact of crowdfunding campaigns for academic research, says Cox. In most cases, the amounts involved are minuscule compared with what the big research councils are offering and involve mainstream crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo rather than specialists such as CrowdScience and DigVentures, which take a cut of the money raised. And there is certainly some way to go before crowdfunding can begin to replace the £5bn the UK government has set aside in the budget for this year.
   [C] When Professor Dave Goulson decided to study the impact of pesticides on bees, he didn’t rate his chances of getting funding from one of the big research councils. Instead he turned to the public, raising almost £8,000 through crowdfunding. Archaeologist Dr David Petts, from Durham University, has also used crowdfunding, raising almost £25,000 to fund a project on Iindisfarne, off the Northumberland coast.
   [D] But while such projects capture the public imagination, are they as credible as other academic studies? As Sarah Main, director of the UK’s Campaign for Science and Engineering says, putting together a proposal to attract the public may not be as "scientifically robust" as an application to a panel of experts. Not necessarily, says Joe Cox, senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth’s business school, who has researched the motivations behind crowdfunding. He points to a study by the US academic Ethan Mollick of decisions by a panel of judges from research councils, versus the public, and found "a remarkable degree of similarity" in their decision-making.
   [E] Squeezed research budgets led both researchers to crowdfunding, which uses the internet to find individuals and organisations to pledge money for specific projects. "It’s increasingly hard to get money from traditional funding bodies, particularly the smaller pots of money," says Petts. And research councils are increasingly risk-averse, he adds. "They’re not comfortable with funding where it’s not clear whether you’ll get a result."
   [F] As it stands, crowdfunding may be best used to test early-stage research. "If you’re successful in raising money via this mechanism and you’ve got a ready-made group of people who are interested in funding your work," says Cox. "That’s a fantastic starting point." But after Brexit, if academics lose European research funding, crowdfunding could come into its own.
   [G] While crowdfunding may be quick "it isn’t money for nothing", as Petts points out. Most academics need to offer incentives to backers and also have to push their project hard on social media. And while "writing half a page of text, making a video and doing some tweeting" is more fun than submitting a formal research bid, it is still time-consuming, says Goulson. While his efforts on social media attracted support from big environmental organisations, he spent as much time on his crowdfunding project as he would have on a formal research bid.
   

选项

答案B

解析 D之后剩下B和F这两个选择。B首句含转折,该句讲到“预测学术研究众筹活动的规模和影响还为时尚早”,接下来整段都是对科研众筹不足之处的分析,可见B前面的段落应该会谈及科研众筹好的方面。D强调通过众筹筹资的科研项目计划在可信性上不一定输于向专家小组申请资金时提交的研究计划,属于对科研众筹的肯定。B在语义上能与D衔接,故本题选B。
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