(B)
A simple idea underpins science: “trust, but verify.” Results should always be subject to
challenge from experiment. That simple but powerful idea has generated a vast body of
knowledge. Since its birth in the 17th century, modern science has changed the world beyond
recognition, and overwhelmingly for the better.
But success can breed complacency. Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and
not enough verifying—to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity. Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis.
A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of the published research
cannot be replicated. Even that may be optimistic. Last year researchers at one biotech firm,
Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research.
Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly
important papers. A leading computer scientist frets that three-quarters of papers in his subfield
are bunk. In 2000-2010, roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research
that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties.
Even when flawed research does not put people’s lives at risk, it squanders money and the
efforts of some of the world’s best minds. The opportunity costs of stymied progress are hard
to quantify, but they are likely to be vast. And they could be rising.
One reason is the competitiveness of science. In the 1950s, when modern academic
research took shape after its successes in World War II, it was still a rarefied pastime. The
entire club of scientists numbered a few hundred thousand. As their ranks have swelled, to 6 to 7 million active researchers on the latest reckoning, scientists have lost their taste for
self-policing and quality control. The obligation to “publish or perish” has come to rule over
academic life. Verification does little to advance a researcher’s career. And without verification,
dubious findings live on to mislead.
Careerism also encourages exaggeration and the cherry-picking of results. In order to
safeguard their exclusivity, the leading journals impose high rejection rates: in excess of 90%
of submitted manuscripts. The most striking findings have the greatest chance of making it
onto the page. Little wonder that one in three researchers knows of a colleague who has pepped
up a paper by, say, excluding inconvenient data from results “based on a gut feeling.”
Conversely, failures to prove a hypothesis are rarely even offered for publication, let alone
accepted. “Negative results” now account for only 14% of published papers, down from 30%
in 1990. Yet knowing what is false is as important to science as knowing what is true. The
failure to report failures means that researchers waste money and effort exploring blind alleys
already investigated by other scientists.
All this makes a shaky foundation for an enterprise dedicated to discovering the truth
about the world. What might be done to shore it up? One priority should be for all disciplines
to follow the example of those that have done most to tighten standards.
Ideally, research protocols should be registered in advance and monitored in virtual
notebooks. This would curb the temptation to fiddle with the experiment’s design midstream so as to make the results look more substantial than they are. Where possible, trial data also
should be open for other researchers to inspect and test. Journals should allocate space for
“uninteresting” work, and grant-givers should set aside money to pay for it.
Science still commands enormous—if sometimes bemused—respect. But its privileged
status is founded on the capacity to be right most of the time and to correct its mistakes when it
gets things wrong. The false trails laid down by shoddy research are an unforgivable barrier to
understanding.
【題組】75. What is the author’s attitude toward scientific research today?
(A) Pessimistic. (B) Overwhelmed. (C) Concerned. (D) Indifferent.
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