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  3. There is, writes Daniele Fanelli in a recent issue of Nature, something rotten in the state of scientific research—an epidemic o

There is, writes Daniele Fanelli in a recent issue of Nature, something rotten in the state of scientific research—an epidemic o

admin2022-07-29  74
问题     There is, writes Daniele Fanelli in a recent issue of Nature, something rotten in the state of scientific research—an epidemic of false, biased, and falsified findings where "only the most egregious cases of misconduct are discovered and punished." Fanelli is a leading thinker in an increasingly alarming field of scientific research: one that seeks to find out why it is that so many scientific researches turn out to be wrong.
    For a long time the focus has either been on industry funding as a source of bias, particularly in drug research, or on those who deliberately commit fraud, such as the spectacular case of Diederik Stapel, a Dutch social psychologist who was found to have fabricated at least 55 research papers over 20 years. But an increasing number of studies have shown that flawed research is a much wider phenomenon, especially in the biomedical sciences. Indeed, the investigation into Stapel also blamed a "sloppy" research culture that often ignored inconvenient data and misunderstood important statistical methods.
    "There’s little question that the scientific literature is awash in false findings—findings that if you try to replicate you’ll probably never succeed or at least find them to be different from what was initially said," says Fanelli. "But people don’t appreciate that this is not because scientists are manipulating these results, consciously or unconsciously; it’s largely because we have a system that favors statistical flukes instead of replicable findings."
    This is why, he says, we need to extend the idea of academic misconduct (currently limited to fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism) to "distorted reporting"—the failure to communicate all the information someone would need to validate your findings. Right now, he says, we’re missing all the "unconscious biased, the systemic biases, the practices, mistakes, and problems that hardly ever count as cheating", even though they have a very important—and probably the largest—effect on creating technically false results in the literature.
    One particularly challenging bias is that academic journals tend to publish only positive results. As Isabelle Boutron, a professor of epidemiology at Rene Descartes University in Paris, points out, studies have shown that peer reviewers are influenced by trial results; one study showed that they not only favored a paper showing a positive effect over a near-identical paper showing no effect, they also gave the positive paper higher scores for its scientific methods. And Boutron has herself found extensive evidence of scientists spinning their findings to claim benefits that their actual results didn’t quite support.
    "We need a major cultural change," says Fanelli. "But when you think that, even 20 years ago, these issues were practically never discussed, I think we’re making considerable progress."
What does the underlined word "egregious" (Line 4, Paragraph I) mean?
选项 A、visible
B、productive
C、feasible
D、conspicuous
答案D
解析 本题关键词是egregious，属于猜词题，可以定位到第一段。根据第一段第一句的前半句话，目前科研界大量研究结果虚假、片面、刻意伪造。第二句话说到法内利努力探寻为何这么多的科学研究都是错的。这两点都说明了当今科研风气不容乐观。该词所在句子为：只有……的学术不端才会被发现并惩罚。由此可知一定有很多研究错误并没有被发现，只有很过分的才被曝光和惩罚。通过代入法，只有选项D “conspicuous(明显的，骇人听闻的，极度的)”与原文逻辑一致，为正确选项。选项A意为“看得到的”，它主要和invisible“看不到的”对应，相比选项D来说不够贴切。选项B意为“多产的，富有成效的”，不符合语境。选项C意为“可行的”，也不符合语境。
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