This article reports on a Research through Design study exploring how to design a tool for helping readers of science journalism understand the strength and uncertainty of scientific evidence in news stories about health science, using both textual and visual information. A central aim has been to teach readers about criteria for assessing scientific evidence, in particular in order to help readers differentiate between science and pseudoscience. Working in a research-in-the-wild collaboration with a website for popular science, the study presents the design and evaluation of the Scientific Evidence Indicator, which uses metadata about scientific publications to present an assessment of evidence strength to the readers. Evaluations of the design demonstrate some success in helping readers recognize whether studies have undergone scientific peer review or not, but point to challenges in facilitating a more in-depth understanding. Insights from the study point to a potential for developing similar tools aimed at journalists rather than directly at audiences.
翻译:这篇文章报道了《设计研究》研究,探讨如何设计一个工具,帮助科学新闻的读者利用文字和视觉信息,了解健康科学新闻报道的科学证据的力量和不确定性;一个中心目标是向读者传授评估科学证据的标准,特别是为了帮助读者区分科学与伪科学;与大众科学网站进行现场研究协作,该研究介绍了科学证据指标的设计和评价,该指标利用科学出版物的元数据向读者介绍证据实力评估;对设计的评价表明,在帮助读者认识研究是否经过科学同行审查,但指出促进更深入理解方面的挑战方面,取得了一些成功;从研究点到开发类似面向记者而不是直接针对受众的工具的潜力。