Singh Nina, Sit Matthew T, Schutte Marissa K, Chan Gabriel E, Aldana Jeyson E, Cervantes Diana, Himmelstein Clyde H, Yeh Pamela J
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, United States of America.
PeerJ. 2017 Aug 21;5:e3639. doi: 10.7717/peerj.3639. eCollection 2017.
Although evolution is the driving force behind many of today's major public health and agriculture issues, both journalists and scientific researchers often do not use the term "evolve" in discussions of these topics.
In a total of 1,066 articles and 716 papers selected from 25 US newspapers and 34 scientific journals, we assess usage of the word "evolve" and its substitute words in the contexts of cancer tumor drug resistance, HIV drug resistance, mosquito insecticide resistance, and weed pesticide resistance.
We find significant differences in the use of "evolve" among fields and sources. "Evolve" is used most when discussing weed pesticide resistance (25.9% in newspapers, 52.4% in journals) and least when discussing cancer tumor drug resistance (3.9% in newspapers, 9.8% in journals). On average, scientific journals use "evolve" more often (22.2%) than newspapers (7.8%). Different types of journals (general science, general clinical, cancer specific, and drug resistance specific) show significantly different "evolve" usages when discussing cancer tumor drug resistance.
We examine potential explanations of these findings, such as the relatively recent framing of cancer in evolutionary terms, before looking at consequences of low "evolve" usage and of differential "evolve" usage across fields. Use of the word "evolve" may not reflect current understanding of the problems we examine. However, given that our ability to tackle resistance issues relies upon accurate understandings of what causes and exacerbates resistance, use of the word "evolve" when called for may help us confront these issues in the future.
尽管进化是当今许多重大公共卫生和农业问题背后的驱动力，但记者和科研人员在讨论这些话题时往往不使用“进化”一词。
我们从25家美国报纸和34种科学期刊中总共选取了1066篇文章和716篇论文，评估“进化”一词及其替代词在癌症肿瘤耐药性、艾滋病毒耐药性、蚊虫抗药性和杂草抗药性等语境中的使用情况。
我们发现不同领域和来源在“进化”一词的使用上存在显著差异。在讨论杂草抗药性时，“进化”一词的使用频率最高（报纸中为25.9%，期刊中为52.4%）；在讨论癌症肿瘤耐药性时，使用频率最低（报纸中为3.9%，期刊中为9.8%）。平均而言，科学期刊使用“进化”一词的频率（22.2%）高于报纸（7.8%）。在讨论癌症肿瘤耐药性时，不同类型的期刊（综合科学、普通临床、癌症专科和耐药性专科）对“进化”一词的使用存在显著差异。
在探讨“进化”一词低使用频率及跨领域使用差异的后果之前，我们研究了这些发现的潜在解释，比如癌症在进化方面的概念形成相对较晚。“进化”一词的使用可能无法反映我们对所研究问题的当前理解。然而，鉴于我们解决耐药性问题的能力依赖于对导致和加剧耐药性的因素的准确理解，在需要时使用“进化”一词可能有助于我们未来应对这些问题。
