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  3. Ah, the naivety of the older generation. Nearly 500 eminent astronomers, biologists, chemists, physicists and earth scientists h

Ah, the naivety of the older generation. Nearly 500 eminent astronomers, biologists, chemists, physicists and earth scientists h

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问题     Ah, the naivety of the older generation. Nearly 500 eminent astronomers, biologists, chemists, physicists and earth scientists have been surveyed to identify the "core traits of exemplary scientists". Their answer? Honesty is critical, second only to curiosity, and we ought to do more to instil it in those considering science careers.
    Ironically, they are deceiving themselves. Researchers have never been whiter than white. Here are a couple of revealing numbers. About 2 per cent of scientists admit to at least one act of research misconduct. But as a whole, researchers say that around 14 per cent of their colleagues are involved in such behaviour. Someone’s not being straight.
    Those figures come from a 2009 meta-analysis (far more scientifically reliable than a single sample of " honoured" academics) , that also found one-third of scientists confessed to "questionable research practices" such as cooking data, mining it for a significant result that is then presented as the original target of the study, selective publication or concealing conflicts of interest.
    We may never know for sure how widespread such behaviour is. According to another meta-analysis published in October, scientists are becoming less likely to admit to fabrication, falsification or plagiarism. That study also found that researchers see plagiarism as more heinous than making results up. They are more likely to report a colleague they catch in an act of plagiarism than one fabricating or falsifying data.
    How can this be so, when honesty is supposedly such an essential attribute? Because it gets the job done. Raymond De Vries at the University of Michigan and colleagues have argued that data manipulation based on intuition of what a result should look like is "normal misbehaviour." They see such common misbehaviours as having "a useful and irreplaceable role" in science. Why? Because of "the ambiguities and everyday demands of scientific research."
    In other words, data isn’t often as clean as you would like. According to Frederick Grinnell, an ethicist at the University of Texas, intuition is " an important, and perhaps in the end a researcher’ s best, guide to distinguishing between data and noise." Sometimes you just know that data point was an anomaly to be ignored.
    Should we do something to make science more virtuous? Probably not. Those eminent academics questioned for the survey by Michigan State University, which was released today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, are hopelessly optimistic when it comes to improving ethical standards: 94 per cent of them said students can learn scientific values and virtues from "exemplary scientists."
The author’ s attitude towards the present situation is
选项 A、optimistic.
B、puzzled.
C、carefree.
D、pessimistic.
答案D
解析 (1)根据题目顺序，可定位至全文最后一段，题干中的“现状(the present situation)”指现在科研中的不诚实现象。(2)根据文章，“我们可以提升科研中的德行吗?也许不行”(第7段：Probably not)。“那些受到质疑的学者们对现状持有乐观态度，这令人失望”(第7段：hopelessly optimistic)。(3)此外，文章第l段和最后一段都提到了“模范科学家”，而在examplary scientists上都使用了引号，表达出了反讽的语气。综合这些信息，可知答案为选项[D]。
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