Faking science: scientificness, credibility, and belief in pseudoscience

Abstract

Due to the prevalence of pseudoscience, scientific illiteracy, and fake news, scientists are increasingly concerned about pseudoscientific beliefs among individuals without advanced scientific training. We recruited 85 undergraduate participants who read 10 pseudoscientific texts in each of the following conditions: APA-style references, credentialed names, absolute language, probabilistic language, and a control. We collected data on participants’ perceived scientificness, credibility, and belief for each condition to explore potential changes in belief when pseudoscientific texts were disguised as science. Our results for scientificness revealed moderate effects for added references (d = 0.64) and smaller effects for credentialed names (d = 0.29). Results for credibility paralleled those for scientificness, showing a large effect for the reference condition (d = 0.83), and a smaller, though meaningful effect for credentialed names (d = 0.42). Belief in pseudoscience did not change before or after any study condition, implying that beliefs are stable even when pseudoscience appears scientific and credible.

Keywords:

• Pseudoscience
• textual processing
• scientific literacy
• credibility
• belief

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.