issue40 求拍，总觉得有点偏题...

zhusichao88UID: 2786754

有个问题想讨论一下，关于individual interest,一定是要跟research有关吗？或者可以写于research无关，比如爬山，环游世界什么的？但是这样的话不是很好写...

ISSUE40 - "Scholars and researchers should not be concerned with whether their work makes a contribution to the larger society. It is more important that they pursue their individual interests, however unusual or idiosyncratic those interests may seem."

The speaker claims that the individual interests of scholars and researchers are much more important than the contributions they make to the society. I fundamentally agree with the statement that individual interests play a crucial role in the history of societal development except the unnecessary extension of the bound of individual interests.

As a common sense for everyone that interest indicate the direction of our lives. From my own experience and observation, people who show great interest in certain field always make progress more or less in that field. A case to this point is the solution of Goldbach conjecture, for which a series of axioms are produced during the analysis of this complex problem, and a group of mathematicians donated their whole lives to this problem mainly because of the interest held constantly in their mind. Other Famous scholars and researchers would also have such experience: Copernicus originally studied medical science while he changed his occupation as an astronomer. Putting forward the famous heliocentric theory which was against the belief people daily received, he was denounced by the public. However, his strong interest motivates himself insisting on this field and this great breakthrough achieved by him influence other researchers, in other word, it is Copernicus’s adherence to his own interest that improve our though and the society.

Yet, although the chief task for scholars and researchers is exploring the unknowing realms, even themselves cannot ensure whether the result they achieved would benefit the society. At the very beginning of a certain research, while the future of the current projects are not so clear, scholars
and researchers are only impelled by their interest and attracted by the mystery of the unknown world. What researchers pursue are the truth and new discovery, however, whether mankind would benefit from the results of them is still unknown or not so bright. Only through practice can a new thing be verified and accepted. Like Madam Curie who discovered the element of radium which seemed useless but only a new blank was filled in the periodic table during that period. Nevertheless, the radiation of this great discovery brings a tremendous application on medical diagnosis of the broken bones and revolution of exploring petroleum and mines in the near future of Madam Curie’s time. This example is only a myriad of successful cases in the progress of human beings. What should be mentioned is that scholars and researchers intend to make our society much better by their efforts and discoveries, however, the aftermath is sometime unpredictable, we have to learn to appreciate their success and be tolerable to their failure.

However, when the researches come to conflict with the laws, standards of moral and the principles of ethics, they should be banned immediately. As we know that cloning used in medical area would help to rejuvenate failure organs, and in the protection of animals in danger would help increase the population of them. At the same time, what human cloning brings about is the challenge to original moral and ethical principles so that a myriad of political and religion leaders, and some organization chasing human rights are against it; some nations even legislate to restrict this controversial problem. From this point of view, no matter how interested in certain area, the researchers and scholars should pay attention to the reaction of public. The same situation goes to the cruel conduct of abuse of human subjects in biomedical experiments during the II World War, when the physicians and scientists conducted biomedical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. This behavior strongly violates personal humanities and should be judged guilty in trials

In conclusion, Scholars and researches have the rights to pursue individual interested discoveries. However, any conduct of them should be restricted by laws, morality, ethic and humanities. Any abuse of the rights should be banned and punished.