美国国家公共电台 NPR How A Budget Squeeze Can Lead To Sloppy Science And Even Cheating

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Federal money for science has been shrinking. Under the Trump¹ administration's budget proposal, it could be squeezed even further. And when scientists are under financial pressure, they sometimes cut corners in ways that can hurt us all. NPR's Richard Harris reports.

RICHARD HARRIS, BYLINE²: Mary Allen was a graduate student in a lab at the University of Wisconsin that was facing financial pressure. The year was 2005. One post-doctoral researcher was laid off, and the professor in charge of the lab was scrambling³ for more funding. But Allen and her fellow grad students saw something that looked fishy⁴ in a grant document.

MARY ALLEN: At the time it was discovered, we weren't certain it was falsification. It could have been a mistake.

HARRIS: The grant report didn't accurately⁵ describe work that had been previously⁶ done in the lab.

ALLEN: And the results sounded slightly better than they really were.

HARRIS: Allen and her fellow graduate students faced a difficult decision.

ALLEN: If it's really falsification, we may not have the ability to keep going in grad school, or they may ask us to go to a different lab and start new projects. Either way, that would be a huge hit to everybody's career.

HARRIS: Long story short, the professor quit and later pleaded guilty to scientific misconduct. Allen liked her professor and thought she was a good scientist. The professor told her students she fudged the report to keep her lab going.

ALLEN: So I think one of the reasons she did it was that she was under so much stress about getting funding for the students and being afraid she wouldn't be able to fund us that she decided⁷ tweaking the data a little to make it look better would allow her to get a grant and therefore fund us.

HARRIS: Outright⁸ misconduct and fraud are apparently⁹ rare in science, says social scientist Brian Martinson at the HealthPartners Institute in Minneapolis. But the pressures on scientists appear frequently in many more subtle ways.

BRIAN MARTINSON: If people are working as hard as they can, as many hours as they can physically¹⁰ put in and they're working as smart as they can, then, if they need to get a further edge to try to succeed in their careers, some proportion of people might find themselves making bad decisions and cutting corners.

HARRIS: Martinson has surveyed university scientists and asked them about behaviors he calls undesirable¹¹, such as whether they skipped some rules and regulations about data handling, patient privacy, record keeping and so on.

MARTINSON: Almost half of the scientists who had responded to our survey said to us that they had engaged in at least one of those activities in the prior three years.

HARRIS: And many said they had violated multiple standards.

MARTINSON: When you get people engaging in that many undesirable practices, you go, this can certainly undermine the quality of the work that's coming out of it and therefore the ability to reproduce it.

HARRIS: And those faulty studies can slow progress as medical scientists work to understand the causes of disease and search for treatments. So it's having an invisible effect on all of us.

MARTINSON: If you've got people who are cutting corners, if you've got people who are doing things that are undermining the quality of research, you have to ask yourself why.

C K GUNSALUS: I think that what we're really talking about here is human nature.

HARRIS: C.K. Gunsalus Gonzales runs the National Center for professional and research ethics¹² at the University of Illinois. She and Martinson were both on a National Academy of Sciences committee on scientific integrity which released a report this week.

GUNSALUS: If you're in an environment that has very high stakes and very low chance of success, those are two of the predictors of environments in which people are going to cheat.

HARRIS: And that's exactly the environment where scientists find themselves today. There are strong career incentives¹³ to bend the rules, say, by exaggerating accomplishments¹⁴ in a grant proposal.

GUNSALUS: One of the rules in life is that if you reward bad conduct, you're going to get a lot more bad conduct because even people with Ph.D.s can figure out what you're rewarding and, say, oh, if that's what it takes to get ahead, I can do that.

HARRIS: But if scientists see everyone else playing by the rules, they are more likely to do so as well. That's why Gunsalus, who swoops¹⁵ into troubled academic departments to fix dysfunction, looks to see whether the leaders are setting a good example. If they are, others are likely to follow.

GUNSALUS: People do fundamentally care about the rigor¹⁶ and integrity of research because that's how progress happens. I mean you can't really scam the facts or nature, right?

HARRIS: And it's not just tax dollars and scientific progress at stake. Careers matter, too. Mary Allen says only 3 of the 6 grad students in her up-rooted lab ended up getting Ph.D.s. It took her eight and a half years. She just recently got a job as a research assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder¹⁷. So now she finds herself in the same position as her former professor - on the quest for scarce grant funding.

ALLEN: It was the worst funding NIH had seen, and we've only seen it go downhill. So (laughter) it's even worse than it was before.

HARRIS: And she knows full well what is at stake. Richard Harris, NPR News.

1 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 scrambling   

v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞

参考例句：

• Scrambling up her hair, she darted out of the house. 她匆忙扎起头发，冲出房去。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• She is scrambling eggs. 她正在炒蛋。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 fishy   

adj. 值得怀疑的

参考例句：

• It all sounds very fishy to me.所有这些在我听起来都很可疑。
• There was definitely something fishy going on.肯定当时有可疑的事情在进行中。

5 accurately   

adv.准确地，精确地

参考例句：

• It is hard to hit the ball accurately.准确地击中球很难。
• Now scientists can forecast the weather accurately.现在科学家们能准确地预报天气。

6 previously   

adv.以前，先前（地）

参考例句：

• The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
• Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。

7 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

8 outright   

adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的

参考例句：

• If you have a complaint you should tell me outright.如果你有不满意的事，你应该直率地对我说。
• You should persuade her to marry you outright.你应该彻底劝服她嫁给你。

9 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

10 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

11 undesirable   

adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子

参考例句：

• They are the undesirable elements among the employees.他们是雇员中的不良分子。
• Certain chemicals can induce undesirable changes in the nervous system.有些化学物质能在神经系统中引起不良变化。

12 ethics   

n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准

参考例句：

• The ethics of his profession don't permit him to do that.他的职业道德不允许他那样做。
• Personal ethics and professional ethics sometimes conflict.个人道德和职业道德有时会相互抵触。

13 incentives   

激励某人做某事的事物( incentive的名词复数 )； 刺激； 诱因； 动机

参考例句：

• tax incentives to encourage savings 鼓励储蓄的税收措施
• Furthermore, subsidies provide incentives only for investments in equipment. 更有甚者，提供津贴仅是为鼓励增添设备的投资。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

14 accomplishments   

n.造诣；完成( accomplishment的名词复数 )；技能；成绩；成就

参考例句：

• It was one of the President's greatest accomplishments. 那是总统最伟大的成就之一。
• Among her accomplishments were sewing,cooking,playing the piano and dancing. 她的才能包括缝纫、烹调、弹钢琴和跳舞。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

15 swoops   

猛扑，突然下降( swoop的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He fixes his eyes on the greyish spine of the old wolf as he swoops down. 他两眼死死盯住老狼灰黑的脊背。 来自汉英文学 - 现代散文
• An owl swoops from the ridge top, noiseless but as flame. 蓦地，山脊上一只夜枭飞扑直下，悄无声响而赫然如一道火光。

16 rigor   

n.严酷，严格，严厉

参考例句：

• Their analysis lacks rigor.他们的分析缺乏严谨性。||The crime will be treated with the full rigor of the law.这一罪行会严格依法审理。

17 boulder   

n.巨砾；卵石，圆石

参考例句：

• We all heaved together and removed the boulder.大家一齐用劲，把大石头搬开了。
• He stepped clear of the boulder.他从大石头后面走了出来。