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  3. When I was a graduate student in biochemistry at Tufts University School of Medicine, I read an abridged version of Montaigne’s

When I was a graduate student in biochemistry at Tufts University School of Medicine, I read an abridged version of Montaigne’s

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问题     When I was a graduate student in biochemistry at Tufts University School of Medicine, I read an abridged version of Montaigne’s Essays. My friend Margaret Rea and I spent hours wandering around Boston discussing the meaning and implications of the essays. Michel de Montaigne lived in the 16th century near Bordeaux, France. He did his writing in the southwest tower of his chateau, where he surrounded himself with a library of more than 1,000 books, a remarkable collection for that time. Montaigne posed the question, "What do I know?" By extension, he asks us all: Why do you believe what you think you know? My latest attempt to answer Montaigne can be found in Everyday Practice of Science: Where Intuition and Passion Meet Objectivity and Logic, originally published in January 2009 and soon to be out in paperback from the Oxford University Press.
    Scientists tend to be glib about answering Montaigne’s question. After all, the success of technology testifies to the truth of our work. But the situation is more complicated.
    In the idealized version of how science is done, facts about the world are waiting to be observed and collected by objective researchers who use the scientific method to carry out their work. But in the everyday practice of science, discovery frequently follows an ambiguous and complicated route. We aim to be objective, but we cannot escape the context of our unique life experiences. Prior knowledge and interests influence what we experience, what we think our experiences mean, and the subsequent actions we take. Opportunities for misinterpretation, error, and self-deception abound.
    Consequently, discovery claims should be thought of as protoscience. Similar to newly staked mining claims, they are full of potential. But it takes communal scrutiny and acceptance to transform a discovery claim into a mature discovery. This is the credibility process, through which the individual researcher’s me, here, now becomes the community’s anyone, anywhere, anytime. Objective knowledge is the goal, not the starting point.
    Once a discovery claim becomes public, the discoverer receives intellectual credit. But, unlike with mining claims, the community takes control of what happens next. Within the complex social structure of the scientific community, researchers make discoveries; editors and reviewers act as gatekeepers by controlling the publication process; other scientists use the new finding to suit their own purposes; and finally, the public (including other scientists) receives the new discovery and possibly accompanying technology. As a discovery claim works its way through the community, a dialectic of interaction and confrontation between shared and competing beliefs about the science and the technology involved transforms an individual’s discovery claim into the community’s credible discovery.
    Two paradoxes infuse this credibility process. First, scientific work tends to focus on some aspect of prevailing knowledge that is viewed as incomplete or incorrect. Little reward accompanies duplication and confirmation of what is already known and believed. The goal is new-search, not research. Not surprisingly, newly published discovery claims and credible discoveries that appear to be important and convincing will always be open to challenge and potential modification or refutation by future researchers. Second, novelty itself frequently provokes disbelief. Nobel Laureate and physiologist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi once described discovery as "seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought." But thinking what nobody else has thought and telling others what they have missed may not change their views. Sometimes years are required for truly novel discovery claims to be accepted and appreciated.
    In the end, credibility "happens" to a discovery claim — a process that corresponds to what philosopher Annette Baier has described as the commons of the mind. "We reason together, challenge, revise, and complete each other’s reasoning and each other’s conceptions of reason," she wrote in a book with that title. In the case of science, it is the commons of the mind where we find the answer to Montaigne’s question: Why do you believe what you think you know?
Which of the following would be the best title of the test?
选项 A、Novelty as an Engine of Scientific Development.
B、Collective Scrutiny in Scientific Discovery.
C、Evolution of Credibility in Doing Science.
D、Challenge to Credibility at the Gate to Science.
答案C
解析 主旨大意题。本文首先以Montaigne的问题为引子提到科学发现的特点，然后提到将科学发现的申明变为成熟的科学是一个可信性的过程，接着具体说明这一可信性过程是如何进行的，随后指出这一可信性过程中存在的两个悖论，最后引用别人的话对可信性过程进行总结，由此可知，本文主要讲述了科学发现是如何被认证的，即科学可信性的演变，故答案为[C]。本文的主题词汇为credibility，由此可首先排除[A]和[B]；文中提到了对可信性过程的质疑，但这只是文中讲述内容的一部分，故排除[D]。
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