考研初试12月22~24日进行,考研初试情况请(),新东方网考研第一时间为考生提供是考研英语一翻译真题解析,供大家参考!同时新东方考研教师将为考生提供视频直播解析。| It wasn’t until after my retirement that I had the time to read scientific papers in medical journals with anything like close attention. Until then, I had, like most doctors, read the authors’ conclusions and assumed that they bore some necessary relation to what had gone before. I had also naively assumed that the editors had done their job and checked the intellectual coherence and probity of the contents of their journals.
It was only after I started to write a weekly column about the medical journals, and began to read scientific papers from beginning to end, that I realized just how bad — inaccurate, misleading, sloppy, illogical — much of the medical literature, even in the best journals, frequently was. My discovery pleased and reassured me in a way: for it showed me that, even in advancing age, I was still capable of being surprised.
I came to recognize various signs of a bad paper: the kind of paper that purports to show that people who eat more than one kilo of broccoli a week were 1.17 times more likely than those who eat less to suffer late in life from pernicious anaemia. 46) There is a great deal of this kind of nonsense in the medical journals which, when taken up by broadcasters and the lay press, generates both health scares and short-lived dietary enthusiasms.
Why is so much bad science published?
A recent paper, titled ‘The Natural Selection of Bad Science’, published on the Royal Society’s open science website, attempts to answer this intriguing and important question.
According to the authors, the problem is not merely that people do bad science, as they have always done, but that our current system of career advancement positively encourages it. They quote ananonymous researcher who said pithily: ‘Poor methods get results.’ What is important is not truth, let alone importance, but publication, which has become almost an end in itself. There has been a kind of inflationary process at work: 47) nowadays anyone applying for a research post has to have published twice the number of papers that would have been required for the same post only 10 years ago. Never mind the quality, then, count the number. It is at least an objective measure.
In addition to the pressure to publish, there is a preference in journals for positive rather than negative results. To prove that factor a has no effect whatever on outcome b may be important in the sense that it refutes a hypothesis, but it is not half so captivating as that factor a has some marginally positive statistical association with outcome b. It may be an elementary principle of statistics that association is not causation, but in practice everyone forgets it.
The easiest way to generate positive associations is to do bad science, for example by trawling through a whole lot of data without a prior hypothesis. For example, if you took 100 dietary factors and tried to associate them with flat feet, you would find some of them that were associated with that condition, associations so strong that at first sight they would appear not to have arisen by chance.
Once it has been shown that the consumption of, shall we say, red cabbage is associated with flat feet, one of two things can happen: someone will try to reproduce the result, or no one will, in which case it will enter scientific mythology. The penalties for having published results which are not reproducible, and prove before long to be misleading, usually do not cancel out the prestige of having published them in the first place: and therefore it is better, from the career point of view, to publish junk than to publish nothing at all. A long list of publications, all of them valueless, is always impressive.
48)Attempts have been made to (control this inflation命题人改编为curb this kind tendency),(for example by trying, when it comes to career advancement这部分被出题人删除), to incorporate some measure of quality as well as quantity into the assessment of an applicant’s published papers. This is the famed citation index, that is to say the number of times a paper has been quoted elsewhere in the scientific literature, the assumption being that an important paper will be cited more often than one of small account. 49) This would be reasonable enough if it were not for the fact that scientists can easily arrange to cite themselves in their future publications, or get associates to do so for them in return for similar favors.
Boiling down an individual’s output to simple, objective metrics, such as number of publications or journal impacts, entails considerable savings in time, energy and ambiguity. Unfortunately, the long-term costs of using simple quantitative metrics to assess researcher merit are likely to be quite great.
50) If we are serious about ensuring that our science is both meaningful and reproducible, we must ensure that our institutions incentivize that kind of science.
In other words, what we need is more emphasis on personal contact and even nepotism in the way careers are advanced: but tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice…
翻译解析:
46) There is a great deal of this kind of nonsense in the medical journals which, when taken up by broadcasters and the lay press, generates both health scares and short-lived dietary enthusiasms.
第一步:切分句子
1.There is a great deal of this kind of nonsense in the medical journals
2., when taken up by broadcasters and the lay press,
3.which generates both health scares and short-lived dietary enthusiasms.
第二步:翻译分句
1.There is a great deal of this kind of nonsense in the medical journals(知识点:there be句型)
医学期刊中存在着大量的谬论
2., when taken up by broadcasters and the lay press,(知识点:被动句)
由广播公司和新闻媒体所占据的
3.which generates both health scares and short-lived dietary enthusiasms.(知识点:定语从句)
这不仅导致了健康恐慌,还引起了短暂的饮食狂热
第三步:整合句子
医学期刊中存在大量的这种谬论,如果由广播公司和新闻媒体报道,不仅会导致健康恐慌,还将引起短暂的饮食狂热
47) nowadays anyone applying for a research post has to have published twice the number of papers that would have been required for the same post only 10 years ago.
第一步:切分句子
1.nowadays anyone applying for a research post
2.has to have published twice the number of papers
3.that would have been required for the same post only 10 years ago.
第二步:翻译分句
1.nowadays anyone applying for a research post (知识点:非谓语作后置定语)
如今任何申请研究职位的人
2.has to have published twice the number of papers (知识点:比较结构)
必须发表两倍的论文
3.that would have been required for the same post only 10 years ago.(知识点:定语从句)
在前申请同样职位所需要的
第三步:整合句子
如今,任何申请研究职位的人都必须发表两倍于前同样职位所需的论文。
48) Attempts have been made to curb this kind tendency to incorporate some measure of quality as well as quantity into the assessment of an applicant’s published papers.
第一步:切分句子
1.Attempts have been made to curb this kind tendency
2.to incorporate some measure of quality as well as quantity
3.into the assessment of an applicant’s published papers.
第二步:翻译分句
1.Attempts have been made to curb this kind tendency (知识点:被动句)
人们已经在试图遏制这种趋势
2.to incorporate some measure of quality as well as quantity(知识点:固定词组)
以此将一些质量和数据衡量结合在一起
3.into the assessment of an applicant’s published papers.(知识点:长介词短语)
在评估申请人发表的论文评估中
第三步:整合句子
人们已经在试图遏制这种趋势,将一些质量和数量衡量结合在申请人发表的论文的评估当中。
49) This would be reasonable enough if it were not for the fact that scientists can easily arrange to cite themselves in their future publications, or get associates to do so for them in return for similar favors.
第一步:切分句子
1.This would be reasonable enough
2.if it were not for the fact that scientists can easily arrange to cite themselves in their future publications,
3.or get associates to do so for them in return for similar favors.
第二步:翻译分句
1.This would be reasonable enough (知识点:无)
这将会是非常合理的
2.if it were not for the fact that scientists can easily arrange to cite themselves in their future publications, (知识点:状语从句)
如果不是因为科学家可以很容易地在未来的出版物中引用自己
3.or get associates to do so for them in return for similar favors.(知识点:固定词组)
亦或是让同事这么做来换取类似的好处
第三步:整合句子
如果不是因为科学家可以很容易地在未来的出版物中引用自己的论文,亦或是让同事这么做来换取类似的好处,这将会是非常合理的。
50)If we are serious about ensuring that our science is both meaningful and reproducible, we must ensure that our institutions incentivize that kind of science.
第一步:切分句子
1.If we are serious about ensuring
2.that our science is both meaningful and reproducible,
3.we must ensure that our institutions incentivize that kind of science.
第二步:翻译分句
1.If we are serious about ensuring(知识点:状语从句)
如果我们确实想确保
2.that our science is both meaningful and reproducible,(知识点:宾语从句)
科学既有意义又可再生
3.we must ensure that our institutions incentivize that kind of science.(知识点:宾语从句)
我们就必须确保我们的制度可以激励这种科学进步。
第三步:整合句子
如果我们确实想确保科学既有意义又可复制,那么我们就必须确保我们的制度可以激励这种科学进步。
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