单选题 Jan Hendrik Schon's success seemed too good to be true, and it was. In only four years as a physicist at Bell Laboratories, Schon, 32, had co-authored 90 scientific papers—one every 16 days, which astonished his colleagues, and made them suspicious. When one co-worker noticed that the same table of data appeared in two separate papers—which also happened to appear in the two most prestigious scientific journals in the world, Science and Nature—the jig was up. In October 2002, a Bell Labs investigation found that Schon had falsified and fabricated data. His career as a scientist was finished.
If it sounds a lot like the fall of Hwang Woo Suk—the South Korean researcher who fabricated his evidence about cloning human cells—it is. Scientific scandals, which are as old 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 the future. But it never is entirely. Science is built on the honor system; the method of peer- review, in which manuscripts are evaluated by experts in the field, is not meant to catch cheats. In recent years, of course, the pressure on scientists to publish in the top journals has increased, making the journals much more crucial to career success. The questions raised anew by Hwang's fall are whether Nature and Science have become too powerful as arbiters of what science reaches the public, and whether the journals are up to their task as gatekeepers.
Each scientific specialty has its own set of journals. Physicists have Physical Review Letters; cell biologists have Cell; neuroscientists have Neuron, and so forth. Science and Nature, though, are the only two major journals that cover the gamut of scientific disciplines, 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. And scientists look to the journals in part to reach journalists. Why do they care? Competition for grants has gotten so fierce that scientists have sought popular renown to gain an edge over their rivals. Publication in specialized journals will win the accolades of academics and satisfy the publish-or-perish imperative, but Science and Nature come with the added bonus of potentially getting your paper written up in The New York Times and other publications.
Scientists are also trying to reach other scientists through Science and Nature, not just the public. Scientists tend to pay more attention to the Big Two than to other journals. When more scientists know about a particular paper, they're more apt to cite it in their own papers. Being oft-cited will increase 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 scientists they're considering supporting.
Whether the clamor to appear in these journals has any bearing on their ability to catch fraud is another matter. The fact is that fraud is terrifically hard to spot. Consider the process Science used to evaluate Hwang's 2005 article. Science editors recognized the manuscript's import almost as soon as it arrived. As part of the standard procedure, they sent it to two members of its Board of Reviewing Editors, who recommended that it go out for peer review (about 30 percent of manuscripts pass this test). This recommendation was made not on the scientific validity of the paper, but on its "novelty, originality, and trendiness," says Denis Duboule, a geneticist at the University of Geneva and a member of Science's Board of Reviewing Editors, in the January 6 issue of Science.
After this, Science sent the paper to three stem-cell experts, who had a week to look it over. Their comments were favorable. How were they to know that the data was fraudulent? "You look at the data and do not assume it's fraud," says one reviewer, anonymously, in Science.
In the end, a big scandal now and then isn't likely to do much damage to the big scientific journals, what editors and scientists worry about more are the myriad smaller infractions that occur all the time, and which are almost impossible to detect. A Nature survey of scientists published last June found that one-third of all respondents had committed some forms of misconduct. These included falsifying research data and having "questionable relationships" with students and subjects—both charges leveled against Hwang. Nobody really knows if this kind of fraud is on the rise, but it is worrying.
Science editors don't have any plans to change the basic editorial peer-review process as a result of the Hwang scandal. They do have plans to scrutinize photographs more closely in an effort to spot instances of fraud, but that policy change had already been decided when the scandal struck. And even if it had been in place, it would not have revealed that Hwang had misrepresented photographs from two stem cell colonies as coming from 11 colonies. With the financial and deadline pressures of the publishing industry, it's unlikely that the journals are going to take markedly stronger measures to vet manuscripts. Beyond replicating the experiments themselves, which would be impractical, it's difficult to see what they could do to make science beyond the honor system.
单选题 Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
  • A. Key scientific journals are authoritative in evaluating scientific papers.
  • B. Peer-review is the most effective method in evaluating and selecting scientific papers.
  • C. Scientists are less likely to achieve career success without publications in top papers.
  • D. Fabricating evidence in scientific researches can be discovered by enough strict evaluation.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 本题考查文章多处细节，需要根据选项一一定位原文进行排除。第二段的倒数第二句话指出，随着要求科学家发表文章的压力日益加大，顶级的期刊在科学家成功的道路上起着非常重要的作用，由此可知，如果没有发表文章，科学家取得事业成功的可能性就会降低，故C正确。第二段中作者指出《科学》杂志主要采取同行评审的方式来审查稿件，但并没说这种方式最有效，故B不对；第五段第二句话提到，学术造假很难被发现，文章最后也提到了这个问题，所以D不对；而选项A原文未提及。
单选题 Science and Nature are top journals in the world in that ______.
  • A. they are built on the honor system
  • B. they are the only world-recognized journals in the scientific circle
  • C. they cover all the research areas of science
  • D. they are as popular as public magazines
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 本题的出题点在因果关系处。第三段指出，每个科学研究领域都有自己的权威期刊，故B不对；《科学》和《自然》之所以非常重要是因为它们是仅有的两本涵盖所有科学研究领域的期刊，因此很多科学家都会阅读这两种期刊以获得研究领域内的前沿消息和发展动向，故C正确。选项A、D原文未提及。
单选题 What can be inferred about a scientist's "Impact Factor"?
  • A. One is more likely to get funding for research with a high Impact Factor.
  • B. One is more likely to get his or her paper published with a high Impact Factor.
  • C. One's Impact Factor will be increased once he or she has a paper published in Science.
  • D. One's Impact Factor will be increased when more people read his or her paper.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 本题的出题点在专有名词处。根据文章第四段，如果某位科学家在《科学》或者《自然》杂志上发表了文章，此文就有可能被其他科学家引用，从而提高他的“影响因素”，这个“影响因素”指的是他的文章被引用的频率。很多基金组织就是根据“影响因素”的高低来决定是否对科学家进行资助。由此可以推测出，“影响因素”越高，获得资助的可能性就越大，所以选A。B说一个人的“影响因素”越高，他或她的论文就越有可能被发表；C说一旦在《科学》杂志上发表了论文，一个人的“影响因素”就会提高；D说有越多的人读自己的论文，“影响因素”就越高，三个选项都在一定程度上歪曲了原文的意思，均应排除。
单选题 According to the passage, manuscripts of science are recommended on their ______.
  • A. novelty, originality, and trendiness
  • B. timeliness
  • C. scientific validity
  • D. readability
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 本题的出题点在人物观点处(say)。第五段最后一句提到，某篇稿件获得推荐是因为它的“新颖性、独创性和潮流性”，并非因为它的科学上的时效性(B)、有效性(C)，或者可读性(D)，故A正确。
单选题 What would be detrimental to big scientific journals according to the author?
  • A. Big scientific scandals once in a while.
  • B. Small infractions that occur all the time.
  • C. Unreliable research data in papers.
  • D. Lack of originality in research papers.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[解析] 本题的出题点在递进处(what...more)。第七段指出，偶尔出现的有关学术造假的大丑闻给大的科学期刊带来的损害并不多。由此可排除A；相反，杂志编辑和科学家们所担心的是那些频繁出现、很难发现的较小的学术造假行为，这些才会给杂志带来灭顶之灾。由此可见，答案为B。第七段还指出这些较小的学术造假行为的一些具体表现：These included falsifying research data and...。因此Unreliable research data in papers只是学术造假的一种具体表现而已，不能涵盖所有的学术造假行为，缺少概括性，因此排除C；文章第五段最后一句提到，文章的原创性只是稿件初步评审时的一个出发点(This recommendation was made not on the scientific validity of the paper, but on its "novelty, originality, and trendiness,"...)，并不是对于杂志而言的灭顶之灾，故排除D。
单选题 Science has decided to ______.
  • A. change its basic evaluation process
  • B. sue Hwang Woo Suk
  • C. have more thorough scrutiny of photographs for fraud
  • D. ensure scientific validity of papers by replicating the experiments
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 本题的出题点在最后一段。最后一段说，《科学》杂志的编辑们并没有打算彻底改变该杂志一直采用的“稿件同行评审”的办法，排除A；至于是否起诉Hwang(B)，文章未提及；段末说要想发现造假，只能重复一遍研究者的实验，而这是不可能的，故D不对；第二句话说，杂志社在Hwang的丑闻发生之前，就对研究照片的审查工作非常严格，以期杜绝造假，今后也依然打算继续这样做，故C正确。