[i习作temp] issue185 [决战AW小组］第14次作业ithaka [复制链接]

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电梯直达

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发表于 2009-2-24 12:03:16 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

185"Scandals—whether in politics, academia, or other areas—can be useful. They focus our attention on problems in ways that no speaker or reformer ever could."

Scandals, defined as publicized incidents that brings about disgrace or offend the moral sensibilities of society, often attract collective focus. Not only do they focus our attention, but they also exposure problems which are often neglected by the public. However, the importance of speaker or reformers’ focus is can not be replaced by the effect of scandals.

Edmund Burke gave a humorous description of scandal: “ an event has happened, upon which it’s difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.” When a scandal is exposed to public, people can not help with their curiosity but talk it out. Scandals often travel faster than any other message. That’s why scandal can attract collective focus so effectively. What's more, scandals on a societal level often reveal things that are usually hidden from public. The Sanlu poisonous milk scandal is an example. Although there had been critics about food security and supervision system in China, the scandal reveals that so many persons related to the affair keep on tolerating the risk of damaging public health, in order to gain a higher profit. People were astonished by the scandal, for it did great damage to the trust on cooperates and even government. Such a profound evidence support the long existed criticism on a decline of moral standard along with solely focus on economic growth. In this way, scandals serve as sound evidence in social criticism, showing significance of things in question.

Moreover, sandals often shift public focus and scrutiny onto inherent part of the problem. In 2005 the South Korea’s stem cell scandal rocks not only the biology community but also the public trust of science. Woo Suk Hwuang, the leading scientist, confess that he focus too much on science and neglected ethic issues. However, it tend out to be that not only did he mistreated egg donors, but also made data without a experimental foundation. The scandal strikes the notion that science should simply be trusted to govern itself, or that professional science offers a sufficient guard against abuses. Even the most prestigious scientific magazine, is not plausible for it cannot control the whole process of the research and experience the risk of credulity. It remind people that under the shadow of profit pursuing and political pressure, every field that seems to hold a neutral stand should be scrutinized before trusted. Without the scandal, this kind of inherent problems may not be exposed in to sunlight.

However, the reformer and speaker’s effort on should not be depreciated. As I mentioned above, scandals can be very useful to attract public attention on certain problems, but they are simply evidence and need to be analyzed. In addition, scandals often show the dark side of a problem, while reformers make effort to give constructive suggestions besides pointing out fallacies. Therefore, scandals and efforts of speakers and reformers together will serve to improve our condition. After all, in a world full of scandals but none of reformers would make people despair about the future.