A nine-year-old schoolgirl single-handedly cooks up a science-fair experiment that ends up debunking a widely practiced medical

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问题     A nine-year-old schoolgirl single-handedly cooks up a science-fair experiment that ends up debunking a widely practiced medical treatment. Emily Rosa’ s target was a practice known as therapeutic touch (TT for short) , whose advocates manipulate patients’ " energy field" to make them feel better and even, say some, to cure them of various ills. Yet Emily’s test shows that these energy fields can’t be detected, even by trained TT practitioners. Obviously mindful of the publicity value of the situation, Journal editor George Lundberg appeared on TV to declare, "Age doesn’t matter. It’s good science that matters, and this is good science."
    Emily’s mother Linda Rosa, a registered nurse, has been campaigning against TT for nearly a decade. Linda first thought about TT in the late ’80s, when she learned it was on the approved list for continuing nursing education in Colorado. Its 100 000 trained practitioners (48 000 in the U. S.) don’t even touch their patients. Instead, they waved their hands a few inches from the patient’ s body, pushing energy fields around until they’ re in " balance". TT advocates say these manipulations can help heal wounds, relieve pain and reduce fever. The claims are taken seriously enough that TT therapists are frequently hired by leading hospitals, at up to $70 an hour, to smooth patients’ energy, sometimes during surgery.
    Yet Rosa could not find any evidence that it works. To provide such proof, TT therapists would have to sit down for independent testing—something they haven’t been eager to do, even though James Randi has offered more than $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate the existence of a human energy field. (He’s had one taker so far. She failed. ) A skeptic might conclude that TT practitioners are afraid to lay their beliefs on the line. But who could turn down an innocent fourth-grader? Says Emily: "I think they didn’t take me very seriously because I’ m a kid."
    The experiment was straightforward: 21 TT therapists stuck their hands, palms up, through a screen. Emily held her own hand over one of theirs—left or right—and the practitioners had to say which hand it was. When the results were recorded, they’d done no better than they would have by simply guessing. If there was an energy field, they couldn’t feel it.
What can we learn from the passage?

选项 A、Some widely accepted beliefs can be deceiving.
B、Solid evidence weights more than pure theories.
C、Little children can be as clever as trained TT practitioners.
D、The principle of TT is too profound to understand.

答案A

解析 推断题。题目问的是通过短文可以学到什么?短文大意是关于一个广为应用的治疗手段竟被孩子实验推翻。只有A项“一些广被接受的观点也可能是骗人的”与短文意思相符,故选A。
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