TheUS$3-millionFundamentalPhys-考网

The US $3-million Fundamental Physics Prize is indeed an interesting experiment, as Alexander Polyakov said when he accepted this year’s award in March. And it is far from the only one of its type. As a News Feature article in Nature discusses, a string of lucrative awards for researchers have joined the Nobel Prizes in recent years. Many, like the Fundamental Physics Prize, are funded from the telephone-number-sized bank accounts of Internet entrepreneurs. These benefactors have succeeded in their chosen fields, they say, and they want to use their wealth to draw attention to those who have succeeded in science.

　What’s not to like? Quite a lot, according to a handful of scientists quoted in the News Feature. You cannot buy class, as the old saying goes, and these upstart entrepreneurs cannot buy their prizes the prestige of the Nobels. The new awards are an exercise in self-promotion for those behind them, say scientists. They could distort the achievement-based system of peer-review-led research. They could cement the status quo of peer-reviewed research. They do not fund peer-reviewed research. They perpetuate the myth of the lone genius.

　The goals of the prize-givers seem as scattered as the criticism. Some want to shock, others to draw people into science, or to better reward those who have made their careers in research.

　As Nature has pointed out before, there are some legitimate concerns about how science prizes—both new and old—are distributed. The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, launched this year, takes an unrepresentative view of what the life sciences include. But the Nobel Foundation’s limit of three recipients per prize, each of whom must still be living, has long been outgrown by the collaborative nature of modern research—as will be demonstrated by the inevitable row over who is ignored when it comes to acknowledging the discovery of the Higgs boson. The Nobels were, of course, themselves set up by a very rich individual who had decided what he wanted to do with his own money. Time, rather than intention, has given them legitimacy.

　As much as some scientists may complain about the new awards, two things seem clear. First, most researchers would accept such a prize if they were offered one. Second, it is surely a good thing that the money and attention come to science rather than go elsewhere. It is fair to criticize and question the mechanism—that is the culture of research, after all—but it is the prize-givers’ money to do with as they please. It is wise to take such gifts with gratitude and grace.

The discovery of the Higgs boson is a typical case which involves _____.

A.controversies over the recipients’ status
B.the joint effort of modern researchers
C.legitimate concerns over the new prizes
D.the demonstration of research findings

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答案： B

本题解析：

细节题。根据Higgs boson定位到第四段。第四段第①句是中心句，指出人们对新老奖项的颁发的担忧是合理的；第②句以“生命科学突破奖”为例，指出其非常规的观点（unrepresentative view）；第③句举例说明诺贝尔基金会限制获奖人的条件的做法已不合时宜。本段第三句指出诺贝尔奖限定每个奖项的获奖者不能超过3人且他们都必须在世的做法早已不符合具有合作性质的现代科学研究（the collaborative nature of modern research），接着以希格斯玻色子的发现为例子，说明决定谁获奖谁不获奖是有争议的，据此判定它是一个涉及科学家合作的项目，与B项Higgs boson的发现是一个科学家共同努力的研究的例子一致。因此，B项是正确选项。A项“奖项获得者地位”是干扰项，原文确实提到了对奖项获得者的争议但原文提及的争论的焦点是“谁被忽略了” （who is ignored），即谁该获奖，而非A项的（the recipients’status）；C项“对新奖项的合理担忧”并不是举例说明的对象，且Higgs boson的例子也不属于新奖项；文中并未提及“研究结果的证明”，故排除D项。