A nine-year-old schoolgirl single-handedly cooks up a science-fair experiment that ends up debunking（揭穿……的真相）a widely practiced medical treatment. Emily Rosa's target was a practice known as therapeutic（治療的）touch (TT for short), whose advocates manipulate patients' "energy field" to make them feel better and even, say some, to cure them of various illness. Yet Emily's test shows that these energy fields can't be detected, even by trained TT practitioners（行醫(yī)者）. Obviously mindful of the publicity value of the situation, Journal editor George Lundberg appeared on TV to declare, "Age doesn't matter. It's good science that matters, and this is good science."
Emily's mother Linda Rosa, a registered nurse, has been campaigning against TT for nearly a decade. Linda first thought about TT in the late '80s, when she learned it was on the approved list for continuing nursing education in Colorado. Its 100,000 trained practitioners (48,000 in the U.S.) don't even touch their patients. Instead, they waved their hands a few inches from the patient's body, pushing energy fields around until they're in "balance". TT advocates say these manipulations can help heal wounds, relieve pain and reduce fever, The claims are taken seriously enough that TT therapists are frequently hired by leading hospitals, at up to $70 an hour, to smooth patients' energy, sometimes during surgery.
Yet Rosa could not find any evidence that it works. To provide such proof, TT therapists would have to sit down for independent testing—something they haven't been eager to do, even though James Randi has offered more than $1 million to anyone who can demonstrate the existence of a human energy field.(He's had one taker so far. She failed.) A skeptic might conclude that TT practitioners are afraid to lay their beliefs on the line. But who could turn down an innocent fourth-grader? Says Emily, "I think they didn't take me very seriously because I'm a kid."
The experiment was straightforward: 21 TT therapists stuck their hands, palms up, through a screen. Emily held her own hand over one of theirs—left or right—and the practitioners had to say which hand it was. When the results were recorded, they'd done no better than they would have by simply guessing. If there was an energy field, they couldn't feel it.
1.Which of the following is evidence that TT is widely practiced?
A.TT has been in existence for decades.
B.Many patients were cured by therapeutic touch.
C.TT therapists are often employed by leading hospitals.
D.More than 100,000 people are undergoing TT treatment.
2.Very few TT practitioners responded to the $1 million offer because______.
A.they didn't take the offer seriously B.they didn't want to risk their career
C.they were unwilling to reveal their secret D.they thought it was not in line with their practice
3.The purpose of Emily Rosa's experiment was______.
A.to see why TT could work the way it did
B.to find out how TT cured patients' illnesses
C.to test whether she could sense the human energy field
D.to test whether a human energy field really existed
4.Why did some TT practitioners agree to be the subjects of Emily's experiment?
A.It involved nothing more than mere guessing.
B.They thought it was going to be a lot of fun.
C.It was more straightforward than other experiments.
D.They sensed no harm in a little girl's experiment.
5.What can we learn from the passage?
A.Some widely accepted beliefs can be deceiving.
B.Solid evidence weighs more than pure theories.
C.Little children can be as clever as trained TT practitioners.
D.The principle of TT is too profound to understand.
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1.【答案】C。
【解析】文中第二段最后一句話提到，TT的執(zhí)業(yè)者常常被一些先進的醫(yī)院高薪聘用。選項B中cure為“治愈”的意思。選項D中，undergo是“承受，擔當；遭遇”的意思。B、D兩項意思均與文章不符。選項A本身的陳述并沒錯，但它并非TT is widely practiced的evidence。
2.【答案】C。
【解析】從第三段第四句話“...TT practitioners are afraid to lay their beliefs on the line”可知C項正確。實際上，根據(jù)常識也可知C為答案。
3.【答案】D。
【解析】選擇依據(jù)為第一段前三句及第三段前兩句話和文章最后一句話。
4.【答案】D。
【解析】選擇依據(jù)為第三段最后一句話：“因為我是小孩，所以我想他們并不太在意我。”
5.【答案】A。
【解析】選項C、D很容易被排除。而選項B在邏輯上不嚴謹：如果純理論是正確的話，它和事實一樣是很重要的。關(guān)鍵在于：① 本文所述TT并非理論，只是騙術(shù)罷了；② 即使B項的陳述本身是對的，而本文并沒有涉及理論和事實哪個更重要的問題。而從文章第一句話也可知本文主旨：要揭露TT的騙術(shù)。
