问题详情

You have seen them in movies: scientists who are infallible and coldly objective--little more than animated computers in white lab coats. They take measurements and record results as if the collection of data were the sole object of their lives. The assumption= If one gathers enough facts about something, the relationships between those facts will spontaneously reveal themselves.
Nonsense!
The myth of the infallible scientist evaporates when one thinks of the number of great ideas in science whose originators were correct in general but wrong in detail. The English physicist John Dalton gets credit for modern atomic theory, but his mathematical formulas for calculating atomic weights were incorrect. The Polish astronomer Copernicus, who corrected Ptolemy"s ancient concept of an Earth-centered universe, nevertheless was mistaken in the particulars of the planets" orbits.
Luck, too, has played a determining role in scientific discovery. The French chemist Pasteur demonstrated that life does not arise spontaneously from air. But it may have been luck that he happened to use an easy-to-kill yeast and not the hay bacillus that another, long-forgotten, investigator had chosen for the same experiment. We now know that hay bacillus is heat-resistant and grows even after the boiling that killed Pasteur"s yeast. If Pasteur had used the hay bacillus, his "proof" would not have materialized.
Gregor Mendel, the founder of modern genetics, epitomizes the humanness of the scientist. Plant hybridization intrigued and puzzled Mendel, an Augustinian monk with some training in mathematics and the natural sciences. He had read in the professional literature that crosses between certain species regularly yielded many hybrids with identical traits; but when hybrids were crossed, all kinds of strange new combinations of traits cropped up. The principle of inheritance, if there was one, was elusive.
Mendel had the basic idea that there might be simple mathematical relationships among plants in different generations. To pursue this hypothesis, he decided to establish experimental plots in the monastery garden at Brunn, raise a number of varieties of peas, interbreed them, count and classify the offspring of each generation, and see whether any reliable mathematical ratios could be deduced.
After many years of meticulously growing, harvesting, and counting pea plants, Mendel thought he had something worth talking about. So, in 1865, he appeared before the Brunn Society for the Study of Natural Science, reported on his research, and postulated what have since come to be called the Mendelian laws. Society members listened politely but, insofar as anybody knows, asked few questions and engaged in little discussion. It may even be that, as he proceeded, a certain suspicion emerged out of the embarrassed silence. After all, Mendel lacked a degree and had published no research. Now, if Pasteur had advanced this idea...
Mendel"s assertion that separate and distinct "elements" of inheritance must exist, despite the fact that he couldn"t produce any, was close to asking the society to accept something on faith. There was no evidence for Mendel"s hypothesis other than his computations; and his wildly unconventional application of algebra to botany made it difficult for his listeners to understand that those computations were the evidence.
Mendel undoubtedly died without knowing that his findings on peas had indeed illuminated a well-nigh universal pattern. Luck had been with him in his choice of which particular traits to study. We now know that groups of genes do not always act independently. Often they are linked, their effect being to transmit a package of traits. Knowing nothing about genes, let alone the phenomenon of linkage, Mendel was spared failure because the traits that he chose to follow were each controlled separately. The probability of making such a happy cho
A．objects to the tendency of scientists to rely on existing data
B．rejects the way in which scientists are portrayed in the media
C．is amused at the accidental nature of some scientific findings
D．opposes the glorification of certain scientists at the expense of others请帮忙给出正确答案和分析，谢谢！