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.

According to Paragraph 4, which of the following is true of the Nobels?

A.Their endurance has done justice to them
B.Their legitimacy has long been in dispute
C.They are the most representative honor
D.History has never cast doubt on them

查看答案纠错

答案： A

本题解析：

细节题。根据本段最后一句话“是时间，而不是奖项设立者的意图，证明了诺贝尔奖合理性”，据此判定A项“诺贝尔奖的长久存在为它正名”最符合题意。其中endurance“长久存在”与time对应：do justice to意为“承认……的合理性”，与原文中的give…legitimacy意思相符。B项in dispute（存在争议）与原文legitimacy（合理性）意思相反；末句提到“时间赋予了诺贝尔奖合理性”，但据此并不能得出“诺贝尔奖是最具代表性的荣誉”的结论，C项属于夸大其词；D项“它从未被质疑”属于过度推断，时间证明了诺贝尔奖合理性，但不代表它从没遭受质疑，本段第一句就提到人们对新劳奖项的颁发一直有合理的担忧，never一词过于绝对。