I offer the exchange between you and me as evidence that it has not. Nothing about the advance of meaningful taxonomic distinction has been gained. If you want 'diversions' about grammar there are plenty of listserves for that activity. I said what is above because I grew up learning U.S. English. The British do use the plural verb form with collective nouns.
Effective communication is a necessity in all disciplines.
In this thread we are discussing a minor aspect of the proper way to construct our communications. It must be nice to work in a system in which the basic entities are static and unchanging, despite paradigm shifts. One reason is to avoid unnecessary redundancy.