A Potential Problem With The Popularization Of Science

Popularization of science is important, but like a double-edged sword, can have certain drawbacks. Here is an interesting paper, abstract:

Science popularization fulfills the important task of making scientific knowledge understandable and accessible for the lay public. However, the simplification of information required to achieve this accessibility may lead to the risk of audiences relying overly strongly on their own epistemic capabilities when making judgments about scientific claims. Moreover, they may underestimate how the division of cognitive labor makes them dependent on experts. This article reports an empirical study demonstrating that this "easiness effect of science popularization" occurs when laypeople read authentic popularized science depictions. After reading popularized articles addressed to a lay audience, laypeople agreed more with the knowledge claims they contained and were more confident in their claim judgments than after reading articles addressed to expert audiences. Implications for communicating scientific knowledge to the general public are discussed.

I believe that people who do not have a science background tend to underestimate the complexity of science, the high degree of “division of cognitive labor” in science (an expert on one field may know little to nothing about another field), and they also misunderstand the basic idea behind modern science.  On this latter point, science is not really about making final and definitive statements, but rather assigning probabilities to hypothesis based on the available evidence. Therefore, people take a single pronouncement as “the final word” and then get frustrated, or disillusioned with science, when that “final word” is later over-turned by a subsequent “final word.”  Popular writers of science also get facts wring, based in their overestimation of their own understanding of the topic, and pass on these misunderstandings to the public. One hope is that blogs like ApplyForLife will enable people with formal scientific training to directly communicate useful findings directly to the public, with the constant caveat that almost nothing in science is “final” – a point that often eludes the popular writers in scientific topics.