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  3. Susan Baroness Greenfield is a British institution. In a country that perceives its scientists as white-coated eccentrics, and p

Susan Baroness Greenfield is a British institution. In a country that perceives its scientists as white-coated eccentrics, and p

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问题     Susan Baroness Greenfield is a British institution. In a country that perceives its scientists as white-coated eccentrics, and probably male, Lady Greenfield is fashionable, extravagant, and female. At least, that is the image she has sought to project as a populariser of science. She is accused, though, of bringing another British institution, the Royal Institution (RI), to the verge of bankruptcy. The RI, of which she was director from 1998 until last Friday (January 8th), has made her job redundant. She says she plans to respond with a suit for sexual discrimination.
    Lady Greenfield, a neuroscientist at Oxford University, was recruited to shake up the two-century-old institution because she had made a name for herself, particularly on television, as one of the popular faces of science. The RI is, in part, a members’ club famous for its Christmas lectures "adapted to a juvenile audience" , which are broadcast on television every year, and its Friday evening discourses (black ties, please, gentlemen), in which prominent scientists chat about their work for precisely an hour—no more and no less—before everyone is served tea and chocolate cake. But it is also a serious research laboratory (one of the longest-established in the world), looking into things like the medical applications of nanotechnology.
    Lady Greenfield’s offence, if offence it be, was to modernize the RI’s headquarters in May-fair, one of the most stylish parts of London, without proper cost control. The redecoration included a high-class bar and restaurant that are open to the general public. Sadly, these opened for business in October 2008—the least favorable moment imaginable for such a venture.
    The redecoration, which cost ￡22m, much of which was raised by selling the institution’s shares of property, has left the RI ￡3m in debt, and the trustees have decided that one way to cut costs is to cut the job of director. Lady Greenfield, the first female director in a line that stretches back through Michael Faraday to Humphry Davy, seems to suspect that financial considerations were not the only ones when this decision was made.
    Instead of a director, the RI is to be led by a newly-invented chief executive officer, in the person of Chris Rofe. Mr. Rofe, who was appointed in April 2009, has a degree in business administration, not science. Given the debt, though, perhaps an alchemist, a person who devotes himself to turning ordinary metals into gold, would be the most appropriate person for the job.
It can be learned from Paragraph 4 that
选项 A、the RI has sold all its property for redecoration.
B、the redecoration has undermined the RI’s reputation.
C、the RI fired Lady Greenfield to cut redecoration costs.
D、Lady Greenfield thought her dismissal unfair.
答案D
解析 该题为推理题。由第四段最后一句“Lady Greenfield，the first female director…seems to suspect that financial considerations were not the only ones when this decision was made．”可知，格林菲尔德夫人对于做出这个决定的原因感到怀疑，联系上下文可知，她认为，财政问题不是唯一的原因，其中可能还涉及到性别歧视的问题，D选项“格林菲尔德夫人认为这次撤职对她不公平”，符合题意。选项A说法过于绝对，选项B文中没有提及，选项C是文中皇家科学院给出的表面原因，也予以排除，故选D。
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