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[交流] 英文寫作范本——饒毅致《Nature》主編的信（關(guān)于葉詩文）

饒毅致《自然》雜志總編的信：有關(guān)葉詩文的新聞報道
http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-2237-598917.html

英文原信附后，大意如下：
斐爾,
   你可能因Ewen Callaway對葉詩文的報道而被email狂炸，過去二十小時，給你email的人里面小部分也給我來信。
   如果你奇怪《自然》非本質(zhì)部分一篇報道為何帶來這么大的反應(yīng)，你應(yīng)該高興中文讀者比世界其他讀者更看重你們的新聞報道，與科學(xué)相關(guān)的（即使關(guān)系很�。┮部赡苤赜凇都~約時報》，中文媒體報道用你們的新聞也遠(yuǎn)多于一般西方媒體用你們的新聞。
   Callaway報道最好也是草率、最差是種族偏見：1)最初的副標(biāo)題暗示葉可能舞弊; 2)Callaway用了兩件事實(shí)說明葉驚人地異常，而兩件都錯了; 3)Callaway沒咨詢意見不同的專家，導(dǎo)致報道不平衡，低于公平報道的最低標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。所以，Callaway至少不負(fù)責(zé)任，可能太快就暗示中國運(yùn)動員容易舞弊。他肯定沒有達(dá)到新聞報道的通常標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。
   我很高興看到在我草擬此信的過程中，《自然》可能意識到原副標(biāo)題的偏見，將之由“成績追蹤記錄有助于抓體育舞弊者”更正為“成績追蹤記錄有助于驅(qū)散疑問”。舞弊的前設(shè)改為疑問。
   Callaway報道用的兩個“事實(shí)”讓葉詩文看起來比真實(shí)的要更“異�！保赫f她比自己在2012年7月的記錄要快7秒，說她在最后五十米比男子冠軍Ryan Lochte還要快，而后者是男子第二快的世界紀(jì)錄。
   第一個“事實(shí)”錯了，第二個誤導(dǎo)。1)葉比自己只快5秒，而此前她的記錄創(chuàng)于2011年、不是2012年，這位16歲運(yùn)動員用了一年而不是少于4周刷新自己。2)葉只在混合泳400米中最后自由泳一段比Lochte快，而非整個400米。Lochte在400米是世界第二快的記錄，葉在400米絲毫不能接近他（慢了二十多秒)。葉只是自由泳最強(qiáng)，而在前300米落后于好些女選手。雖然Lochte在400米很快，他在最后50米的自由泳慢于五、六位男選手。葉最后五十米自由泳也慢于那些男子。所以，葉只在她自己的強(qiáng)項(xiàng)而他的弱項(xiàng)快于Lochte。如果Callaway多做的功課，他就難以用這些“事實(shí)”來使“問題”醒目。如果Callaway多查詢，他就能發(fā)現(xiàn)其他游泳運(yùn)動員也曾在十幾歲發(fā)育階段顯著提高記錄。這些事實(shí)更正后，Callaway的報道就沒基礎(chǔ)。
還有好些事實(shí)，可以讓一般讀者更理解葉詩文的成績，我不在此贅述�？梢詤⒁姟陡郊�1》，wikipedia對葉的成績有一個相當(dāng)快而公平的描述。署名的《自然》報道應(yīng)該優(yōu)于Wikipedia。Callaway報道與Wikipedia條目的差別也顯示該記者未采訪已經(jīng)公開提出不同意見的專家。
你應(yīng)該收到了王立銘博士的一封email。他在發(fā)表多篇《自然》和《自然神經(jīng)科學(xué)》的第一作者論文后，獲加州理工學(xué)院的博士，并因此得到有聲譽(yù)的獎學(xué)金到伯克利加州大學(xué)做獨(dú)立的博士后。萬一他給你的email埋在你收到的成百上千郵件中，我將其拷貝為《附件2》。他email給了我、要我看看此事。
Callaway在線報道下面有很多跟帖討論。有些學(xué)生以為有些很有道理（且有實(shí)質(zhì)內(nèi)容）的討論被刪了，他們寄給了我。我選Lai Jiang的一份為《附件3》，Zhenxi Zhang的為《附件4》。你們可以看到學(xué)生和一些更有經(jīng)歷的《自然》讀者不高興是有依據(jù)的，而這些為Callaway忽略。
英國人常忘記、而現(xiàn)代華人不易忘記，世界上很多人以為鴉片戰(zhàn)爭是中國人賣鴉片給英國人。我自己6月份（這確是2012年）又經(jīng)歷一次，我和一位老朋友（麻省理工學(xué)院教授）在香港開會時，發(fā)現(xiàn)她竟然也是這么認(rèn)為。
英國人的國際形象好，部分原因是你們的科學(xué)和科學(xué)家：當(dāng)全世界中學(xué)生都要從教科書學(xué)牛頓和達(dá)爾文時，英國贏得了世界的尊重�！蹲匀弧窇�(yīng)該以這些偉大（且客觀）的科學(xué)家建立的傳統(tǒng)和聲譽(yù)為自豪。他們其中有些曾在《自然》發(fā)表過論文，才有《自然》的今天。你們?nèi)绻扇〈胧┬迯?fù)你們的新聞記者造成的損害，可以加強(qiáng)你們的聲譽(yù)。
英國人從來沒因鴉片戰(zhàn)爭對我們道歉，即使在1997年離開香港時也未顯示絲毫悔意。而香港是英國在鴉片戰(zhàn)爭后強(qiáng)迫我們割讓的土地。所以，記憶是猶新的，而不僅是1840年代的殘余。如果《自然》拒絕承認(rèn)此報道不公平，可能很難“驅(qū)散”英國至上的“疑問”（借用《自然》對葉報道的詞匯）。
中國人受形象不佳的牽累。我們也知道我們還有很多感到羞恥的未解決的問題，包括舞弊。越來越多的中國人能接受合理與平衡的批評，我們在倫敦奧運(yùn)會為我們羽毛球的問題公開道歉就是證據(jù)。但我們對缺依據(jù)、有偏見的批評還很敏感。葉詩文不過是個16歲的年輕人，本該為自己職業(yè)生涯的成就而滿心歡喜。當(dāng)已知她通過了奧運(yùn)會賽前、賽中多次測試，而毫無證據(jù)指責(zé)她的時候，還有很多媒體，特別是《自然》這樣的刊物，渲染負(fù)面輿論多于正面，當(dāng)然令人深感不平。
我希望你們能澄清記錄，發(fā)表平衡Callaway報道的意見。

毅
北京大學(xué)生命科學(xué)學(xué)院神經(jīng)生物學(xué)教授饒毅

附件1 Wikipedia對葉詩文的總結(jié)
附件2 伯克利加州大學(xué)王立明的email
附件3 Lai Jiang在Callaway報道后的意見
附件 4 Zhenxi Zhang在Callaway報道后的意見

原文（2012年8月4日1:57am發(fā)送）
Dear Phil,
   You might have been bombarded with emails about Ewen Callaway’s report on the Chinese Olympic gold medalist Ye Shiwen. Over the last 20 hours, I have received emails from a small fraction of those who had emailed you.
   If you wonder why a piece in a non-essential section of Nature has brought you so much response, you should be happy to know that Chinese readers place much more weight in Nature news reports than the rest of the world does. If an event is related to science (even tangentially) and Nature publishes a news report, many Chinese readers treat the Nature report more seriously than New York Times. Chinese news media also use Nature news pieces much more than the regular Western news media would.
   The Callaway report was sloppy at the best and racially biased at the worst: 1) the original subtitle implied cheating on Ye’s part, setting a negative tone for the report; 2) Callaway presented two facts to establish that Ye was strikingly anomalous, but both “facts” were wrong; 3) Callaway did not check with experts whose opinions did not support the doping explanation, and thus did not provide a balance report that is the minimal standard of fair reporting. Therefore, Callaway is at least irresponsible, and could have jumped too quickly to imply that Chinese athletes were prone to cheating. He has certainly not held onto the usual standard of news reporting.
   I am glad that, while I was drafting this letter, Nature may have already noticed the bias in the original subtitle and corrected it by changing it from “Performance profiling could help to catch cheaters in sports” to “Performance profiling could help to dispel doubts”. A presumption of cheating has changed to doubts.
   The Callaway report presented two “facts” which made Ye Shiwen seem more “anomalous” than she really was by stating: that she was 7 seconds faster than herself in the same event in July 2012, and that, in the last 50 meters, she was faster than Ryan Lochte, the gold medalist of the same event for men, with the second fastest record.
   The first “fact” was wrong, while the second was misleading. 1) Ye was only ~5 seconds faster than her own record in July, 2011, giving the 16 year old a full year rather than less than 4 weeks to improve her own record. 2) Ye was faster than Lochte only in the freestyle, not for the entire 400 meters. Lochte’s time was the second fastest for the entire 400 meters, for which Ye was not even close (she was more than 20 seconds slower than Lochte in 400 meters). Ye was only at her best in freestyle and trailed behind other women in the same event in the first 300 meters of the individual medley. While Lochte was the fastest in 400 meters, he was slower than 5 or 6 men in the last 50 meters of freestyle. Ye was slower than those other men. Thus, Ye was only faster than Lochte in a style that was her strength and his weakness. Had Callaway done a bit more home work, then he would have had a hard time to use these “facts” to highlight the “problem”. Had Callaway done double-checking, he would have found that other swimmers had significantly improved their own records when they were in the teens. Corrections of these facts would have changed the basis for the Callaway report.
There are more facts that would have made the performance of Ye Shiwen more understandable to the general readership, which I will not go into details here. See Attachment 1 for an amazingly quick and well-balanced description of Ye’s performance by Wikipedia. Signed reports in Nature should have been better than Wikipedia. The contrast between the Callaway report and the Wikipedia item shows that the reporter did not interview experts who had publicly voiced different opinions.
You should have received an email from Dr. Liming Wang, who obtained a PhD from Caltech after publishing first author papers in Nature and Nature Neuroscience. He was awarded a prestigious fellowship for an independent postdoc at Berkeley. In case his email has been buried among the hundreds you have received, I am copying it here as Attachment 2. He had sent a copy of his email to me and asked me to look at the issue.
There are many online posts below the Callaway report. Some students think that a few very reasonable (and substantive) posts have been deleted. They have sent these to me and I am including one authored by Lai Jiang as Attachment 3 and another by Zhenxi Zhang as Attachment 4. You can see that the anger of students and more established scientists who read Nature was supported by facts neglected by Callaway.
One point the British often forget, but the modern Chinese do not, is that many in the world wrongly think that the Opium Wars occurred because the Chinese sold opium to the British. I personally experienced this in June (2012) when a long time friend of mine at MIT thought that way while she and I were in Hong Kong attending a meeting.
The British have a good international image, partly because of your science and your scientists: when every middle school student has to know Newton and Darwin in textbooks, the entire Britain wins the respect of the world. Nature should be proud of the tradition and prestige built by the great (and objective) scientists, some of whom have published in Nature to make Nature what it is today. Your prestige will be strengthened when you take steps to repair the damage caused by your news reporters.
The British have never apologized to us about the Opium Wars and did not show slight remorse when leaving Hong Kong in 1997 which the British forced us to cede after the British won the Opium Wars. So the memory is rather fresh, not just lingering from the 1840s. If Nature refuses to admit that this report was not balanced, it will be difficult to “dispel doubts” about British supremacy.
The Chinese suffer from a poor image. We also know that we have many unsolved problems that we are ashamed of, including cheating. More and more Chinese are receptive to legitimate and balanced criticism, as evidenced by our public apology for our faults at the badminton games during the London Olympic. But we are sensitive to ill-founded criticism with apparent biases. Ye Shiwen is only a 16 year old and should have enjoyed her moment of professional achievement. When she is known to have passed multiple tests before and during the London Olympic and there is no evidence to accuse her, it is certainly unjustified when the negative opinions were highly publicized but the positive ones were not, especially in a journal like Nature.
I hope that you will set record straight and publish opinions that balance the Callaway report.

Yi

Yi Rao, Ph.D.
Professor of Neurobiology, Peking University School of Life Sciences
Beijing, China

[ Last edited by 十送紅軍 on 2012-8-4 at 21:04 ]

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[交流] 英文寫作范本——饒毅致《Nature》主編的信（關(guān)于葉詩文）

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