Answer of Section 1, Question 6

In science, not all errors are (i)______: historians have unearthed a number of instances in which an incorrect idea proved far more (ii)______ than thousands of others that were trivially mistaken or narrowly correct. These are the (iii)______ mistakes: errors that touch on deep, fundamental features of the world around us and prompt further research that leads to major breakthroughs. Mistakes they certainly are, but sciences would be far worse off without them.

官方解說：

In order to determine which answer choices best fit into the blanks, it is helpful to look at the last two sentences, which concern "errors that ... prompt further research that leads to major breakthroughs," that is, "mistakes" from which the sciences actually benefit. When we go back to the first sentence, we can see that Blank (i) requires an answer choice that will complete an assertion about errors. The part of the sentence that follows the colon tells us that in "a number of instances" an "incorrect idea" has been different in some way, which will be characterized in Blank (ii), from ideas that were "trivially mistaken or narrowly correct." Therefore the best answer choice for Blank (i) must be "created equal": not all errors are created equal because in some instances errors have had some special quality, being more "insidious" or "potent" or "inconsequential" than narrowly correct ideas. Since we are concerned here with errors that have led to breakthroughs, the answer choice for Blank (ii) has to be something positive: of the three choices available, only "potent" fills this requirement. The final blank, Blank (iii), must be filled with a word that characterizes these "potent" mistakes that lead to breakthroughs, and "productive" is the only one that logically fits the context.

Thus the correct answer is created equal, potent, and productive.

難易度：3