Are Experts Always Right
专家总是对的吗
The world has become so complicated that we’ve lost confidence in our ability to understand and deal with it. But common sense is useful now as it ever was. No amount of expertise substitutes for an intimate knowledge of a person or a situation. At times you just have to trust your own judgement.
It almost cost me my life to learn that. I was reading a book one day, idly scratching the back of my head, when I noticed that, in one particular spot, the scratching echoed inside my head like fingernails on an empty cardboard carton, I rushed off to my doctor.
“Got a hole in your head, have you?” he teased. “It’s nothing—just one of those little scalp nerves sounding off.”
Two years and four doctors later, I was still being told it was nothing. To the fifth doctor. I said, almost in desperation,”But I live in tis body. I know something’s different.”
“If you won’t take my word for it,I’ll take an X-ray and prove it to you,” he said.
Well, there it was, of course, the tumor that had made a hole as big as an eye socket in the back of my skull. After the operation, a young resident paused by my bed. ”It’s a good thing you’re so smart,” he said.” Most patient die of these tumors because we don’t know they’re there until it is too late.”
I’m really not so smart. And I’m too docile in the face of authority. I should have been more aggressive with those first four doctors. It’s hard to question opinions delivered with absolute certainty.
Experts always sound so sure. Nevile Chamberlain, the British prime minister, was positive, just before the start of World War II, that there would be “peace for our time.” Producer Irving Thalberg did not hesitate to advise Louis B. Mayer against buying the rights to Gone With the Wind because “no Civil War picture ever made a nickel.” Even Abraham Lincoln surely believed it when he said in his Gettysburg Address:” The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here?”
We should not, therefore, be intimidated by experts. When it’s an area we really know about—our bodies, our families, our houses—let’s listen to what the experts say, then make up our own minds. Notes
cardboard carton:a box or container made of a stiff pasteboard of paper
scalp: the skin covering the head
tumor:肿瘤
eye socket: the opening or cavity in which the eye fits
docile: easily managed or taught
reading comprehension
“It” in “?deal with it”(para.1) refers to ______
a. confidence b. the world c. ability d. complication
2. “Expertise” in para.1 means______
a. common sense b. expert skill or knowledge c. unusual ability to appreciate
d. personal experience
3. We have to trust our own judgement since ____
a. not all of us have acquired reliable expertise
b. experts often lose their common sense
c. experts may sometimes fail to give good advice
d. intimate knowledge of a person is not to be substituted for by expertise
4 “That” in “it almost cost me my life to learn that”(para. 2) refers to______
a. I can learn to trust my judgement
b. I can acquire an intimate knowledge of myself
c. common sense is not as useful as knowedge
d. expertise may not be reliable
5 While reading one day, the author______
a. found a hole at the back of his head
b. heard a scratching sound from a carton
c. noticed some echo from his head where he was scratching
d. noticed a sound coming out from his head
6 “tease” in paragraph 3 means______
a. to make fun of b. to comfort c. to reply d. to disbelieve