The cognitive foundations of misinformation on science

Abstract

Populated by many misleading naïve theories, a difficulty understanding the foundations of scientific expertise and conversely, a tendency to trust one’s own intuitions too much and ignore one’s own ignorance, a built-in myside bias, paranoid tendencies, a propensity to simplify when remembering and to exaggerate when communicating, and so forth, the human mind’s evolved complexion is, to say the least, little predisposed to form accurate scientific beliefs. But this needs not be the end of the story, as many of those cognitive proclivities can, under certain conditions, be leveraged to favor accurate belief formation.