For years, smokers have been exhorted to take the initiative and quit: use a nicotine patch, chew nicotine gum, take a prescription medication that can help, call a help line, just say no. But a new study finds that stopping is seldom an individual decision. Smokers tend to quit in groups, the study finds, which means smoking cessation programs should work best if they focus on groups rather than individuals. It also means that people may help many more than just themselves by quitting: quitting can have a ripple effect prompting an entire social network to break the habit.
The study, by Dr. Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School and James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, followed thousands of smokers and nonsmokers for 32 years, from 1971 until 2003, studying them as part of a large network of relatives, co-workers, neighbors, friends and friends of friends.
It was a time when the percentage of adult smokers in the United States fell to 21 percent from 45 percent. As the investigators watched the smokers and their social networks, they saw what they said was a striking effect—smokers had formed little social clusters and, as the years went by, entire clusters of smokers were stopping en masse. So were clusters of clusters that were only loosely connected. Dr. Christakis described watching the vanishing clusters as like lying on your back in a field, looking up at stars that were burning out. "It’s not like one little star turning off at a time," he said,"Whole constellations are blinking off at once. "
As cluster after cluster of smokers disappeared, those that remained were pushed to the margins of society, isolated, with fewer friends, fewer social connections. "Smokers used to be the center of the party," Dr. Fowler said, "but now they’ve become wallflowers." "We’ve known smoking was bad for your physical health," he said,"But this shows it also is bad for your social health. Smokers are likely to drive friends away. "
"There is an essential public health message," said Richard Suzman, director of the office of behavioral and social research at the National Institute on Aging, which financed the study. "Obviously, people have to take responsibility for their behavior," Mr. Suzman said. "But a social environment," he added, "can just overpower free will. " With smoking, that can be a good thing, researchers noted. But there also is a sad side. As Dr. Steven Sehroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, pointed out in an editorial accompanying the paper, "a risk of the marginalization of smoking is that it further isolates the group of people with the highest rate of smoking—persons with mental illness, problems with substance abuse, or both.
By saying "but now they’ ve become wallflowers" (Line 3, Paragraph 4), Dr. Fowler intends to show that（）
A. those who are isolated by clusters tend to quit smoking
B. those who keep smoking are now loosely connected to their previous groups
C. those ongoing smokers tend to drive their friend away in parties
D. smoking in clusters are bad for the health of individuals and society alike
参考答案：B
解析：
[考点] 句意理解
此题考查考生根据上下文理解句子的能力。解答此类问题不可只看字面含义，需要结合句子所在段落的语境和主旨来考察各个选项。本段主旨是“随着吸烟群体的消失(cluster of smoker’s disappeared)，那些继续吸烟的人(those that remained)被边缘化(were pushed to the margins of society)”，即他们的社会交往受到影响。从微观线索来看，吸烟者过去是“群体中的核心人物(center of the party)”，而他们现在却成了wallflowers(局外人)。即使考生不认识wallflowers这个词汇，但是也应该推断出它与center of the party意义相反，突现了他们现在不被团体接纳。综合以上信息，可以得知B选项正确。
[干扰项分析] A选项中的those who are isolated by clusters是对原文的误解，原文中谈及“吸烟群体消失，继续吸烟者被边缘化”，而不是“群体将吸烟者边缘化”；此外，“被群体隔离后会戒烟”与主旨“在群体中会戒烟”也相违背。而C选项是原文中无关片段的简单拼凑。D选项也是对原文内容的曲解。因此A、C、D三个选项错误。