IELTS READING; YES, NO, NOT GIVEN (24)

STATEMENT:

  If a majority of scientists at the CRU were cleared of misconduct, the public would be satisfied.

PASSAGE:

In 2009, it was revealed that some of the information published by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in the UK, concerning climate change, had been inaccurate. Furthermore, it was alleged that some of the relevant statistics had been withheld from publication. The ensuing controversy affected the reputation not only of that institution, but also of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with which the CRU is closely involved, and of climate scientists in general. Even if the claims of misconduct and incompetence were eventually proven to be largely untrue, or confined to a few individuals, the damage was done. The perceived wrongdoings of a few people had raised doubts about the many.

• YES

• NO

• NOT GIVEN

STATEMENT:

 In the aftermath of the CRU scandal, most scientists avoided attention.

PASSAGE:

The response of most climate scientists was to cross their fingers and hope for the best, and they kept a low profile. Many no doubt hoped that subsequent independent inquiries into the IPCC and CRU would draw a line under their problems.

• YES

• NO

• NOT GIVEN

STATEMENT:

Journalists have defended the CRU and the IPCC against their critics.

PASSAGE:

However, although these were likely to help, they were unlikely to undo the harm caused by months of hostile news reports and attacks by critics.

• YES

• NO

• NOT GIVEN

STATEMENT:

Ralph Cicerone regarded the damage caused by the CRU as extending beyond the field of climate science.

PASSAGE:

The damage that has been done should not be underestimated. As Ralph Cicerone, the President of the US National Academy of Sciences, wrote in an editorial in the journal Science: ‘Public opinion has moved toward the view that scientists often try to suppress alternative hypotheses and ideas and that scientists will withhold data and try to manipulate some aspects of peer review to prevent dissent.’ He concluded that ‘the perceived misbehavior of even a few scientists can diminish the credibility of science as a whole.’

• YES

• NO

• NOT GIVEN

STATEMENT:

  Since 2010, confidence in climate science has risen slightly in the US.

PASSAGE:

An opinion poll taken at the beginning of 2010 found that the proportion of people in the US who trust scientists as a source of information about global warming had dropped from 83 percent, in 2008, to 74 percent. Another survey carried out by the British Broadcasting Corporation in February 2010 found that just 26 percent of British people now believe that climate change is confirmed as being largely human-made, down from 41 percent in November 2009.

• YES

• NO

• NOT GIVEN

STATEMENT:

Climate scientists should take professional advice on regaining public confidence.

PASSAGE:

In fact, climate science needs professional help to rebuild its reputation. It could do worse than follow the advice given by Leslie Gaines-Ross, a ‘reputation strategist’ at Public Relations (PR) company Webef Shandwick, in her recent book Corporate Reputation: 12 Steps to Safeguarding and Recovering Reputation. Gaines-Ross’s strategy is based on her analysis of how various organisations responded to crises, such as desktop-printer firm Xerox, whose business plummeted during the 1990s, and the USA’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) after the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003.

• YES

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• NOT GIVEN

STATEMENT:

It could be said that language begins with gesture.

PASSAGE:

Take gesture, arguably the starting point for language. Until recently, it was considered uniquely human - but not any more. Mike Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and others have compiled a list of gestures observed in monkeys, gibbons, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orang-utans, which reveals that gesticulation plays a large role in their communication.

• YES

• NO

• NOT GIVEN

STATEMENT:

Ape gestures always consist of head or limb movements.

PASSAGE:

Ape gestures can involve touch, vocalising or eye movement, and individuals wait until they have another ape’s attention before making visual or auditory gestures. If their gestures go unacknowledged, they will often repeat them or touch the recipient.

• YES

• NO

• NOT GIVEN

STATEMENT:

Apes ensure that other apes are aware of their gesturing.

PASSAGE:

Ape gestures can involve touch, vocalising or eye movement, and individuals wait until they have another ape’s attention before making visual or auditory gestures. If their gestures go unacknowledged, they will often repeat them or touch the recipient.

• YES

• NO

• NOT GIVEN

STATEMENT:

Primate and human gestures share some key features.

PASSAGE:

In an experiment carried out in 2006 by Erica Cartmill and Richard Byrne from the University of St Andrews in the UK, they got a person to sit on a chair with some highly desirable food such as banana to one side of them and some bland food such as celery to the other. The orang-utans, who could see the person and the food from their enclosures, gestured at their human partners to encourage them to push the desirable food their way. If the person feigned incomprehension and offered the bland food, the animals would change their gestures - just as humans would in a similar situation. If the human seemed to understand while being somewhat confused, giving only half the preferred food, the apes would repeat and exaggerate their gestures - again in exactly the same way a human would. Such findings highlight the fact that the gestures of non­human primates are not merely innate reflexes but are learned, flexible and under voluntary control - all characteristics that are considered prerequisites for human-like communication.

• YES

• NO

• NOT GIVEN