科学美国人60秒 SSS 酒店有臭虫？可能是假的！

（单词翻译）

Some Hotel Bed Bug¹ Sightings May Be Bogus 酒店有臭虫？可能是假的！

If you're a savvy² traveler, when you hunt for a hotel you probably search TripAdvisor for any mention of bed bugs³. But here's the dirty secret behind those bed bug sightings: "The fact that roughly two thirds of travelers can't pick a bed bug out of a lineup means that probably in some cases these are unsubstantiated reports." Mike Potter, an entomology professor at the University of Kentucky.

如果你也是个精明的旅行者，那么你找酒店时可能会通过“猫途鹰”（TripAdvisor）搜索一切提到臭虫的信息。但在这些发现臭虫的事件背后，有一个晦暗的秘密:“事实上，大约三分之二的旅行者无法辨认出臭虫，这就意味着在某些情况下，那些可能是查无实据的报告。”迈克·波特——肯塔基大学的一名昆虫学教授。

\He and his colleagues quizzed 2,000 business and leisure travelers on their bedbug ID skills, through an online survey—asking them to select the bed bug silhouette⁴ in a lineup that also included ants, termites⁵, lice and ticks. Only a third of the respondents correctly nailed the bed bug.

他和同事们通过一项在线调查，对2000名商务和休闲旅行者进行了臭虫识别技能调查。调查中要求他们在一组包括蚂蚁、白蚁、虱子和扁虱在内的虫子中选出臭虫。只有三分之一的调查对象正确地认出了臭虫。

And those incorrect insect IDs could hit hotel owners hard. Because more than half the survey takers said they'd book a different hotel if they saw just one review mentioning the bloodsuckers. Potter's co-author Jerrod Penn, an economist⁶: "The implications of not knowing what a bed bug really is, and just kind of jumping to the worst conclusion—it can be costly⁷ for people."

而那些没有正确识别出臭虫的人可能会给酒店带来沉重打击。因为半数以上的受访者表示，哪怕他们仅看到一篇提及臭虫的评论，他们也会预订一家不同的酒店。波特的合作者、经济学家杰罗德·佩恩说:“不了解臭虫的真正含义，就给出最糟糕的结论——这会使他人付出高昂代价。”

The study is in the journal American Entomologist.

这项研究发表在《美国昆虫学家》杂志上。

Some cities, like New York, already require landlords to disclose past bed bug infestations⁹. And 80 percent of survey respondents want hotels to do the same—even if the infestation⁸ is long gone. Armed with that knowledge, good luck sleeping tight.

一些城市，如纽约，已经明确要求房东公开曾经有无臭虫侵扰的信息。80%的受访者希望酒店也能做到这一点——即使臭虫侵扰早已不复存在。了解了这些信息以后，希望你能睡个好觉。