The easiness effect is the claim that as a result of

science popularization ''Popular Science'' (also known as ''PopSci'') is an American digital magazine carrying popular science content, which refers to articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects. ''Popular Science'' has won over 58 awards, incl ...

laypeople develop an overconfident scientific understanding. This results in science-related decision-making that reflects a misunderstanding of popular science rather than the judgment of professional scientists.

Context

Rainer Bromme and Susan Goldman, writing in the ''

Educational Psychologist An educational psychologist is a psychologist whose differentiating functions may include diagnostic and psycho-educational Psychological evaluation, assessment, psychological counseling in educational communities (students, teachers, parents, ...

'' describe the context, stating "Challenges to understanding science include determining the relevance of information, the tentativeness of scientific truth, distinguishing between scientific and nonscientific issues, and determining what is true and what is false." Scotty Hendricks, a contributing writer to BigThink.com, notes that popular science writers might have to start considering the effect that their work has on the general public.

Evidence

Scharrer and her co-authors studied the claimed effect by inviting laypeople to read popular science articles and/or articles with more scientific detail, publishing their results in ''

Public Understanding of Science Public awareness of science (PAwS) is everything relating to the awareness, attitudes, behaviors, opinions, and activities that comprise the relations between the general public or lay society as a whole to scientific knowledge and organization. ...

''. The subjects were then interviewed to judge their scientific opinions and confidence in those opinions, in relation to the material that they had read. Scharrer's team inferred that there was a statistically significant effect of scientific overconfidence and willingness to override expert opinion. In some of their experiments, Scharrer's team attempted to counteract the easiness effect by explicitly warning subjects of the complexity and controversiality of the scientific material presented. They found that the easiness effect disappeared partially but not completely. The researchers suggest that it has to do mostly with writing style. Popular articles condense the science and speak with certainty whereas an academic paper speaks mostly in terms of probability. Hence reading mostly popularizations leads to overconfidence in the results.

Countermeasures

Scharrer and her co-authors recommended "explicitly highlighting topic complexity and controversiality" in order to reduce the easiness effect, and additionally recommended "a need for further educating the public on the division of cognitive labor and its implications for making judgments" and adding to formal science education the notion that "making reliable judgments often requires deference to scientific experts".

Commentary

Mark Carnall of

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

said that the expanded access that laypeople have to simplified explanations of scientific facts may be the cause of their rising distrust in experts. The partial understanding they get from the "easy-to-digest science stories" from the media and bad

science communication Science communication is the practice of informing, educating, raising awareness of science-related topics, and increasing the sense of wonder about scientific discoveries and arguments. Science communicators and audiences are ambiguously def ...

would give them confidence to reject the actual claims that scientists make. He expresses the concern that "

alternative facts "Alternative facts" was a phrase used by U.S. Counselor to the President, Kellyanne Conway, during a ''Meet the Press'' interview on January 22, 2017, in which she defended White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's false statement about the at ...

" exploit this effect to confuse what scientific facts really are and highlights the importance of critical thinking skills to counter this phenomenon.

References

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