中国科学院大学研究生学术英语读写教程课文翻译
method英语怎么读Jan Hendrik Schon's success seemed too good to be true, and it was. In only four years as aphysicist at Bell Laboratories, Schon,32, had co-authored 90 scientific papers—one every16 days—detailing new discoveries in superconductivity,lasers,nanotechnology andquantum physics. This output astonished his colleagues, and made them suspicious. Whenone co-worker noticed that the same table of data appeared in two separate papers—whichalso happened to appear in the two most prestigious scientific journals in the world, Scienceand Nature-the jig was up. In October 2002, a Bell Labs investigation found that Schon hadfalsified and fabricated data. His career as a scientist was finished.
lf it sounds a lot like the fall of Hwang Woo Suk—the South Korean researcher whofabricated his evidence about cloning human cells—it is. Scientific scandals,which are asold as science itself, tend to follow similar patterns of hubris and comeuppance.Afterwards,colleagues wring their hands and wonder how such malfeasance can be avoided in thefuture. But it never is entirely.Science is built on the honor system; the
method ofpeer-review, in which manuscripts are evaluated by experts in the field,is not meant tocatch cheats. In recent years, of course,the pressure on scientists to publish in the topjournals has increased, making the journals that much more crucial to career success. Thequestions raised anew by Hwang's fall are whether Nature and Science have become toopowerful as arbiters of what science reaches the public, and whether the journals are up totheir task as gatekeepers.
Each scientific specialty has its own set of journals. Physicists have Physical ReviewLetters,cell biologists have Cell,neuroscientists have Neuron, and so forth.Science andNature,though,are the only two major journals that cover the gamut of scientificdisciplines,from meteorology and zoology to quantum physics and chemistry.As a result,journalists look to them each week for the cream of the crop of new science papers. Andscientists look to the journals in part to reach journalists. Why do they care?Competitionfor grants has gotten so fierce that scientists have sought popular renown to gain an edgeover their rivals. Publication in specialized journals will win the accolades of academicsand satisfy the publish-or-perish imperative, but Science and Nature come with t
he added
bonus of potentially getting your paper written up in The New York Times and otherpublications.
Scientists are also trying to reach other scientists through Science and Nature, not just thepublic.The line between popular and professional notoriety is not distinct. Scientists tendto pay more attention to the Big Two than to other journals. When more scientists knowabout a particular paper, they're more apt to cite it in their own papers. Being oft-cited willincrease a scientist's "Impact Factor", a measure of how often papers are cited by peers.Funding agencies use the Impact Factor as a rough measure of the influence of scientiststhey're considering supporting.Because Nature and Science papers have more visibility, thenumber of submissions is growing, say the editors. Nature now gets 10,000 manuscripts ayear, and that figure is rising, says editor-in-chief Phiip Campbell via email. "This partlyreflects the increase in scientific activity around the world," he says. "It also no doubtreflects the increasing and sometimes excessive emphasis amongst funding agencie
s andgovernments on publication measures, such as the typical rates of citation of journals."
Whatever the reasons, the whims of the editors at Science and Nature loom large for manyscientists. When either magazine is considering a paper for publication, the authors are toldnot to speak to the press lest they want to risk rejection."Every scientists hates them andloves them," says a prominent scientist who would not speak for attribution for fear ofoffending the editors. "We hate them because it's so political to get an article in them.Frankly I'm astonished at some of the things they accept,and some of the things theyreject."
Whether the clamor to appear in these journals has any bearing on their ability to catchfraud is another matter. The fact is,fraud is terrifically hard to spot.Consider the processScience used to evaluate Hwang's 2005 article. Science editors recognized the manuscript'simport almost as soon as it arrived.As part of the standard procedure, they sent it to twomembers of its Board of Reviewing Editors,who recommended that it go out f
or peerreview (about 30 percent of manuscripts pass this test). This recommendation was made
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