全国硕士研究生入学考试英语试题及答案1999年(3)

Passage 4
       When a Scottish research team startled the world by revealing 3 months ago that it had cloned an
adult sheep, President Clinton moved swiftly. Declaring that he was opposed to using this unusual animal
husbandry technique to clone humans , he ordered that federal funds not be used for such an experiment-
although no one had proposed to do so--and asked an independent panel of experts chaired by Prinoeton
President Harold Shapiro to report back to the White House in 90 days with recommendations for a na-
tional policy on human cloning. That group--the National Bioethics Advisory Commission ( NBAC)-has
been working feverishly to put its wisdom on paper, and at a meeting on 17 May, members agreed on a
near-final draft of their recommendations.
       NBAC will ask that Clinton ' s 90-day ban on federal funds for human cloning be extended in-
definitely , and possibly that it be made law. But NBAC members are planning to word the recom-
mendation narrowly to avoid new restrictions on research that involves the cloning of human DNA
or cells-routine in molecular biology. The panel has not yet reached agreement on a crucial ques-
tion, however, whether to recommend legislation that would make it a crime for private funding
to be used for human cloning.
       In a draft preface to the recommendations, discussed at the 17 May meeting, Shapiro sug-
gested that the panel had found a broad consensus that it would be "morally unacceptable to at-
tempt to create a human child by adult nuclear cloning. " Shapiro explained during the meeting
that the moral doubt stems mainly from fears about the risk to the health of the child. The panel
then informally accepted several general conclusions , although some details have not been settled.
       NBAC plans to call for a continued ban on federal government funding for any attempt to
clone body cell nuclei to create a child. Because current federal law already forbids the use of fed-
eral funds to create embryos ( the earliest stage of human offspring before birth) for research or to
knowingly endanger an embryo' s life, NBAC will remain silent on embryo research.
       NBAC members also indicated that they will appeal to privately funded researchers and clinics
not to try to clone humans by body cell nuclear transfer. But they were divided on whether to go
further by calling for a federal law that would impose a complete ban on human cloning. Shapiro
and most members favored an appeal for such legislation , but in a phone interview, he said this is-
sue was still "up in the air. "
63. We can learn from the first paragraph that__
[A]federal funds have been used in a project to clone humans
[B] the White House responded strongly to the news of cloning
[C]NBAC was authorized to control the misuse of cloning technique
[D]the White House has got the panel's recommendations on cloning
64. The panel agreed on all of the following except that__
[A]the ban on federal funds for human cloning should be made a law
[B]the cloning of human DNA is not to be put under more control
[C]it is crimtnal to use private funding for human cloning
[D]it would be against ethical values to clone a human being
65 . NBAC will leave the issue of embryo research undiscussed because__
[A]embryo research is just a current development of cloning
[B]the health of the child is not the main concern of embryo research
[C]an embryo' s life will not be endangered in embryo research
[D]the issue is expLicitly stated and settled in the law
66. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that__
[A]some NBAC members hesitate to ban human cloning completely
[B]a law banning human cloning is to be passed in no time
[C] privately funded researchers will respond positively to NBAC' s appeal
[D]the issue of human cloning will soon be settled

Passage 5
       Science, in practice, depends far less on the experiments it prepares than on the preparedness of the
minds of the men who watch the experiments. Sir Isaac Newton supposedly discovered gravity through
the fall of an apple. Apples had been falling in many places for centuries and thousands of people had seen them fall. But Newton for years had been curious about the cause of the orbital motion of the moon and planets. What kept them in place? Why didn' t they fall out of the sky? The fact that the apple fell down toward the earth and not up into the tree answered the question he had been asking himself about those lalger fruits of the heavens, the moon and the planets.
       How many men would have considered the possibility of an apple falling up into the tree? Newton
did because he was not trying to predict anything. He was just wondering.His mind was ready for the
unpredictable. Unpredictabllity is part of the essential nature of research. If you don' t have unpredictable things, you don' t have research. Scienltists tend to forget this when writing their cut and dried reports for the technical journals, but history is filled with examples of it.
       In talking to some scienlists, particularly younger ones, you might gather the impression
that they find the "scientific melhod" a substitute for imaginative thought . I've attended research
conferences where a scientist has been asked what he thinks about the advisability of continuing a
certain experiment. The scientist has frowned, looked at the graphs, and said "the data are still
inconclusive." "We know that, " the men from the budget office have said, "but what do you
think? Is it worthwhile going on? What do you think we might expect?" The scientist has been
shocked at having even been asked to speculate.
       What this amounts to, of course, is that the scientist has become the victim of his own writ-
ings. He has put forward unquestioned claims so consistently that he not only believes them him-
self, but has convinced industrial and business management that they are true. If experiments are
planned and carried out according to plan as faithfully as the reports in the science journals indi-
cate , then it is perfectly logical for management to expect research to produce results measurable
in dollars and cents. It is entirely reasonable for auditors to believe that scientists who know ex-
actly where they are going and how they will get there should not be distracted by the necessity of
keeping one eye on the cash register while the other eye is on the microscope. Nor, if regularity
and conformity to a standard pattern are as desirable to the scientist as the writing of his papers
would appear to reflect , is management to be blamed for discriminating against the "odd balls a-
mong researchers in favor of more conventional thinkers who "work well with the team. "
67. The author wants to prove with the example of Isaac Newton that __
[A] inquiring minds are more important than scientific experiments
[B] science advances when fruitful researches are conducted
[C] scientists seldom forget the essential nature of research
[D] unpredictability weighs less than prediction in scientific research
68 . The author asserts that sclentists __
[A] shouldn't replace "scientific method" with imaginative thought
[ B] shouldn't neglect to speculate on unpredictable things
[ C] should write more concise reports for technical journals
[D]should be confident about their research findings
69. It seems that some young scientists__
[A]have a keen interest in prediction
[B]often speculate on the future
[C] think highly of creative thinking
[D]stick to "scientific method"
70. The author implies that the results of scientific research__
[A]may not be as profitable as they are expected
[B]can be measured in dollars and cents
[C] rely on conformity to a standard pattern
[D]are mostly underestimated by management

Part IV: English-Chinese Translation
       71) While there are almost as many definitions of history as there are historians,modern
practice most closely conforms to one that sees history as the attempt to recreate and explain the
significant events of the past. Caught in the web of its own time and place, each generation of
historians determines anew what is significant for it in the past. In thls search the evidence found
is always incomplete and scattered; it is also frequently partial or partisan. The irony of the histo-
rian' s craft is that its practitioners always know that their efforts are but contributions to an un-
ending process .
       72) Interest in historical methods has arisen less through external challenge to the validity of
history as an intellectual discipline and more from internal quarrels among historians themselves.
While history once revered its affinity to literature and philosophy, the emerging social sciences
seemed to afford greater opportunities for asking new questtons and providing rewarding ap-
proaches to an understanding of the past. Social science methodologies had to be adapted to a dis-
cipline governed by the primacy of historical sources rather than the imperatives of the contempo-
rary world. 73) During this transfer , traditional historical methods were augmented by additional
methodologies designed to interpret the new forms of evidence in the historical study.
       Methodology is a term that remains inherently ambiguous in the historical profession. 74 )
There is no agreement whether methodology refers to the concepts peculiar to historical work in
general or to the research techniques appropriate to the various branches of historical inquiry. His-
torians, especially those so blinded by their research interests that they have been accused of "tun-
nel method , " frequently fall victim to the "technicist fallacy. " Also common in the natural sci-
ences , the technicist fallacy mistakenly identifies the discipline as a whole with certain parts of its
technical implementation. 75 ) It applies equally to traditional historians who view history as only
the external and intemal criticism of sources, and to social science historians who equate their ac-
tivity with specific techniques.
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全国硕士研究生入学考试英语试题及答案1999年(3)