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

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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."
It can be inferred from what Isabelle Boutron has pointed out that________.

选项 A、the result is more important than the research itself
B、it is false to fish for fame
C、more funds and personnel will go to a research with positive results
D、the research with no result is of no value

答案C

解析 本题关键词是人名Isabelle Boutron,问题是:从伊莎贝尔.布特龙的话可以推断出什么?答案可以定位到第五段。根据第五段第二句话,同行评审人员会受试验结果影响。他们往往更青睐有正面结果(positive effect)的论文,还会为带有正面结果的论文的科学研究方法打更高的分数 (higher scores),即带有正面结果的论文获得的资源一定更多,因此选项C与原文属于相同含义,为正确选项。同行评审确实更看重研究结果,但这是他们的主观看法,不是客观事实,因此选项A曲解文意。伊莎贝尔.布特龙的话只是客观陈述了同行审评的情况,不能主观认为其道德品质有问题,所以选项B属于主观推导。选项D过分绝对,因为原文只是说没有结果的研究不那么受青睐,但不等于就没有价值。第三段:科学文献充斥着大量的错误研究结果。第四段:学术不端的范围应该予以扩大。第五段:学术期刊倾向于只发表带有正面结果的论文。
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