Condit C M, Ofulue N, Sheedy K M
Department of Speech Communication, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA.
Am J Hum Genet. 1998 Apr;62(4):979-84. doi: 10.1086/301784.
Scholars have expressed concern that the introduction of substantial coverage of "medical genetics" in the mass media during the past 2 decades represents an increase in biological determinism in public discourse. To test this contention, we analyzed the contents of a randomly selected, structured sample of American public newspapers (n=250) and magazines (n=722) published during 1919-95. Three coders, using three measures, all with intercoder reliability >85%, were employed. Results indicate that the introduction of the discourse of medical genetics is correlated with both a statistically significant decrease in the degree to which articles attribute human characteristics to genetic causes (P<.001) and a statistically significant increase in the differentiation of attributions to genetic and other causes among various conditions or outcomes (P<. 016). There has been no statistically significant change in the relative proportions of physical phenomena attributed to genetic causes, but there has been a statistically significant decrease in the number of articles assigning genetic causes to mental (P<.002) and behavioral (P<.000) characteristics. These results suggest that the current discourse of medical genetics is not accurately described as more biologically deterministic than its antecedents.
学者们担心，在过去20年里大众媒体对“医学遗传学”的大量报道意味着公共话语中生物决定论的抬头。为了验证这一观点，我们分析了1919年至1995年间随机抽取的、结构规范的美国公共报纸样本（n = 250）和杂志样本（n = 722）的内容。我们聘请了三位编码员，采用三种测量方法，编码员之间的信度均大于85%。结果表明，医学遗传学话语的引入与以下情况相关：文章将人类特征归因于遗传原因的程度在统计学上显著降低（P <.001），以及在各种状况或结果中，归因于遗传和其他原因的差异在统计学上显著增加（P <.016）。归因于遗传原因的身体现象的相对比例没有统计学上的显著变化，但将遗传原因归因于心理（P <.002）和行为（P <.000）特征的文章数量在统计学上显著减少。这些结果表明，当前的医学遗传学话语并不比其先前的话语在生物决定论方面有更准确的描述。
