Ik had dit onderzoek ooit al getweet, maar kwam het terug tegen op Freakonomics. Maakt (moeilijke) wiskunde onderzoek beter? Ja zeker, als je tenminste niet veel van wiskunde kent. Volgens deze studie schatten zelfs academici onderzoek als beter in als er wiskunde mee gemoeid is, zelfs als de wiskunde nergens op slaat. In het experiment werd een irrelevante  wiskundige vergelijking geplaatst in abstracten in 1 van 2 wetenschappelijke papers en werd vervolgens gevraagd om de kwaliteit van het onderzoek in te schatten. Het abstract waarin de wiskunde ingelast werd, bleek meer gekozen te worden.

Onwillekeurig doet het me ook denken aan ‘fashionable nonsense‘.

Abstract van het onderzoek:

Mathematics is a fundamental tool of research. Although potentially applicable in every discipline, the amount of training in mathematics that students typically receive varies greatly between different disciplines. In those disciplines where most researchers do not master mathematics, the use of mathematics may be held in too much awe. To demonstrate this I conducted an online experiment with 200 participants, all of which had experience of reading research reports and a postgraduate degree (in any subject). Participants were presented with the abstracts from two published papers (one in evolutionary anthropology and one in sociology). Based on these abstracts, participants were asked to judge the quality of the research. Either one or the other of the two abstracts was manipulated through the inclusion of an extra sentence taken from a completely unrelated paper and presenting an equation that made no sense in the context. The abstract that included the meaningless mathematics tended to be judged of higher quality. However, this “nonsense math effect” was not found among participants with degrees in mathematics, science, technology or medicine.