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The world has become so complex that we’ve lost confidence in our ability to understand and deal with it. But common sense is useful now as it ever was. No amount of expertise (专家意见) substitutes for a detailed knowledge of a person or a situation by oneself. At times you just have to trust your own judgment. It almost cost me my life to learn that. I was reading a book one day, idly scratching the back of my head, when I noticed that, in one particular spot, the scratching echoed (回声) inside my head like fingernails on an empty cardboard box, I rushed off to my doctor. “Got a hole in your head, have you?” he teased. “It’s nothing – just one of those little head skin nerves sounding off.”

Two years and four doctors later, I was still being told it was nothing. To the fifth doctor, I said, almost in desperation, “But I live in its body. I know something’s different.”

“If you won’t take my word for it, I’ll take an X – ray and prove it to you,” he said. Well, there it was, of course, the tumor (肿瘤) that had made a hole as big as an eye socket in the back of my skull. After the operation, a young doctor paused by my bed. “It’s a good thing you’re so smart,” he said. “Most patients die of these tumors because we don’t know they’re there until it is too late.”

I’m really not so smart. And I’m too  easily – controlled in the face of authority. I should have been more aggressive with those first four doctors. It’s hard to question opinions delivered with absolute certainty. Experts always sound so sure. Nevile Chamberlain, the British prime minister, was positive, just before the start of World War II, that there would be “peace for our time.” Producer Irving Thalberg did not hesitate to advise Louis B. Mayer against buying the rights to Gone With the Wind because “no Civil War picture ever made a nickel.” Even Abraham Lincoln surely believed it when he said in his Gettysburg Address: “The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here…”

We should not, therefore, be frightened by experts. When it’s an area we really know about – our bodies, our families, our houses – let’s listen to what the experts say, then make up our own minds.

1.The purpose of writing this passage is to tell us that          .

       A.common sense is useless

       B.doctors are always reliable

       C.experts are not always right

       D.doctors are smarter than patients

2.We have to trust our own judgment sometimes because          .

       A.experts are often aggressive

       B.experts often lost their common sense

       C.we know ourselves better than anybody else

       D.not all of us have acquired reliable expertise

3.While reading one day, the author          .

       A.felt something wrong with the back of his head

       B.heard a scratching sound from a box

       C.found a hole at the back of his head

       D.hurt his head with his fingernails

4.The author didn’t think he was smart (para. 4) because          .

       A.he had already suffered for two years.

       B.he had believed too much in expertise

       C.he had not been able to put up with the pain

       D.he had formed too strong an opinion of himself

5.It happens that the examples given by the author are all         .

       A.connected with wars                            B.popular themes in movies

       C.set in American Civil War                      D.taken from modern American history

70.The author’s attitude toward expertise in his own experience is that of         .

       A.doubt       B.unconcern C.acceptance       D.refusal

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