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31"Money spent on research is almost always a good investment, even when the results of that research are controversial."
1、科研投资对于社会发展、一个国家的竞争力的提高和人们生活水平的提高非常有利,的确非常有必要投资。
2、但是并不是说我们应该全力以赴去投资科研
3、而且某些研究特别是那些充满争议的研究领域很可能给我们社会带来灾难。
The speaker asserts that all investments on research are wise, even those researches are controversial. I concede that research accomplishments is vital for social progress and therefore it is necessary for us to invest largely on it, yet I wonder whether there are other more meaningful choices and whether certain kind of research really deserves our large investment.
Admittedly, large investment on research is especially necessary and is usually a profitable business. After all, fruits from various researches are powerful impetus for people's rising living standards and nations' progress. In this sense, paying attention to and spending money on research is a country's indispensable responsibilities. It is evidence that nowadays, nearly every country try to own pivotal technologies, such as nucleus technology, aeronautics and space technology and so on, all of which is essential for its status and power in the world. Thus, investing great deal of money on those researches is meaningful for a nation and for its people. Furthermore, investing on researches, especially those controversial ones with high risks would usually turns out to be an excellent investment with high social or financial rewards. For that matter, many people may regard certain research investment as lucrative and attractive business. Some medicines' research is a telling example. Those studies always require large financial support and some of them may suffer controversial for the uncertainty for the results, yet if such experiments succeed in the future, the social and financial rewards would be especially tremendous.
However, I doubt that we should spend nearly all of money and energy on research for several reasons. On the one hand, research investment usually requires a great deal of money and its results is usually uncertain and thus whether such action is wise or not should be judged in the future. At the same time, there are so many pressing social problems waiting us to address, such as poverty, illiteracy, drug abuse, terrorism and so forth. Given limited money, is it more reasonable and necessary for us to pay more attention to those immediate problems rather than pursuing those potential achievements? On the other hand, besides research realm, we still have numerous investment choices, such as education, service industries, public hygiene and so on, some of which would sometimes result in greater social and financial benefits. In this sense, before our investment decisions, we should consider and compare thoroughly about the potential benefits we would acquired from investing research and our opportunity costs.
Furthermore, to allege that all researches including those controversial ones deserve our investment is obviously too arbitrary. It is entirely possible that certain research pursuits, especially those full of controversy would surely bring tragedy for our society. Take the famous research topic--Clone--as an example. This is one of the most astonishing and challenging biomedical techniques and is thought to be quite promising in gene savings. However, human cloning is not only dangerous technically, but also perilous to the morality and ethics. Thus, can we still be confident that such research area also deserves our precious fund and would contribute the society and ourselves a lot?
In sum, investing and supporting research is actually important for any social progress and sometimes it would return tremendously in terms of money and social welfare. However, we should always be prudent enough before our investment decisions. Maybe there are more meaningful and profitable realms and maybe our investment would turn out to be a calamity. |
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