翻译题
Publication bias in academic journals is nothing new. A finding of no correlation between sporting events and either violent crime or property crime may be analytically top class, but you couldn't be blamed, frankly, for not giving a damn. 【F1】But if journal editors are more interested in surprising or dramatic results, there is a danger that the final selection of published papers offers a distorted vision of reality. This should skew the distribution of published results, towards more "significant" findings. But a paper just published in a journal finds evidence of a different sort of bias, closer to the source. The results suggest that among the results that are only just significant, 10-20% have been made up. 【F2】One explanation is that if a result shows up as significant at the 5% significance level (the industry standard) then researchers crack open the champagne and move on to making economics jokes. But if the result is ridiculously close to a positive result then perhaps the researchers will mess about a bit with their method... and celebrate their nice publisher-friendly result. 【F3】One of the paper's authors explains that in economics it is difficult to conduct controlled experiments, which ultimately gives a lot of freedom to researchers to twist their methods. Sometimes researchers are twisting because they want to find the best way of estimating an effect, but sometimes it's in the search for a significant effect The distinction might be hazy, even in their own minds. 【F4】This is worrying for those trying to interpret and communicate the latest research, as it is impossible to tell if there has been foul play in any individual study. But more fundamentally it is worrying for the profession and policymakers making decisions based on economic evidence; being idle and running multiple, slightly different tests on the same data rapidly sucks meaning from the reported size and accuracy of the final results. Various solutions have been proposed. 【F5】One is to publish "pre-analysis plans", where researchers say how they will do their analysis before they actually do it. Another is to encourage more copy. To avoid the embarrassment of a non-result, researchers should be stricter with themselves when it comes to twisting their results. When sample sizes are small, this fix is difficult, as halving the sample power from tests. But in a world of big data, it could work. The bigger barrier might be getting career-conscious researchers to sign up.
【答案解析】①本句的主句为主系表结构，that引导从句作主句的表语成分，该表语从句是对主句主语One explanation的展开和具体说明；该表语从句本身是复合句，其中包含if引导的条件状语从句，as significant at…(the industry standard)是其中的状语，修饰谓语shows up；括号内the industry standard为插入语，起补充说明的作用；show up意为“显示，呈现”。②crack open the champagne意为“开香槟酒”。
【答案解析】①本句为复合句。主句为主系表结构，This指代前文提到的研究人员为追求某种效果调整研究方法的做法；those是those people的缩写，for those…为主句的状语，表示“对某人而言……”；those后的动名词短语是其后置定语。②逗号后的as引导原因状语从句，其句型结构为it is a．to do sth．，其中it为形式主语，真正主语是后面的to do不定式。③if在此引导tell的宾语从句，而非引导条件状语从句，应理解为“是否”，而非“如果”；there has been是there be句型的现在完成时态。