Science fiction makes poorer readers

That’s crap. :mad:Without Science fiction and fantasy I would never have become the reader I am now . Reading those two genres got me interested in reading all types of books which otherwise , never would have happened. :)
 
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Actually after carefully reading the article , I don't think they are knocking SF or SF readers:

“So when readers who are biased against SF read the word ‘airlock’, their negative assumptions kick in – ‘Oh, it’s that kind of story’ – and they begin reading poorly. So, no, SF doesn’t really make you stupid. It’s more that if you’re stupid enough to be biased against SF you will read SF stupidly.”
 
The key point I got from their findings was....

"if you’re stupid enough to be biased against SF you will read SF stupidly"
 
As far as I'm concerned, science fiction and literary fiction are the only strands of fiction that can really make people think.

[Detective stories are what I call puzzles to be solved and whilst interesting in themselves, are not demanding because at the end of the day the puzzle solution is given to you.]

The experiment as reported gives no indication of how representative the sample readers were of the population, but if it is representative, then it is a really sad day for humanity.
 
There's a guy at Shropshire County Council responsible for preparing the lists for the library's reading groups and acquiring the books. I met him and asked him why no Science Fiction ever appeared on the lists.

"What do you suggest?" he asked.

"Flowers for Algernon as a starter."

"Never heard of it."

Two months later it appeared on the list, I persuaded our reading group to vote for it and we read and discussed it.

"It's not Science Fiction!" was the general comment. Followed by "One of the best stories I've ever read." (so it can't be science fiction can it?)

People have a pre-conceived attitudes when it comes to Science Fiction that colour any conversation or research.
 
Thing is most people categorise subjects they are not involved with in very simplistic terms. Fantasy is Lord of the Rings; Scifi is Star Trek; Dinosaurs all existed at one single point in time (actually most ages/periods in history are a single point in time - the Roman Empire is a single point in time etc...).

So its easy for them to hold a bias opinion because their understanding is so simplistic. This is a sensible approach too since no one person can learn everything and learning takes quite a considerable amount of investment in time and, often, money.


I would hazard that Science fiction likely has more of a reaction than many other types and that the reaction to it is likely similar to the one people get when reading technical books on subjects outside of their interests/experiences. Ergo its a "this is all way too complicated/techy/etc... for me to understand". No matter the fact that most sci-fi readers don't understand the physics of warp drive; in story context they generally only need to know that it makes your ship go fast; much like how in most medieval stories people only need to know that a horse lets you go faster.
 
Reading the four passages, I do actually think that the SF ones do sound a bit less sophisticated than the "normal" versions. However, I think this is because of the generic nature of the SF additions: "person" has been changed to "android", a minor character is depicted as a four-armed alien for the sake of it, etc. The events in it are clearly real-world events with a gloss. The gloss feels like a lot of non-SF readers' idea of SF: a sort of 1950s Buck Rogers world where anything goes. So in that way, the SF passages do feel "sillier".

Also, in an SF novel, I would expect the things that matter to have a particularly SF aspect (and often great general significance) to them, whether it's a serious consideration of the meaning of consciousness in a robot or just blasting some aliens with laser guns. In the "normal" scenes, there's more of a feeling that the (galactically, pretty minor) events depicted could form a pivotal moment in the story, especially in a more "literary" work, where almost any event could trigger the character into having a vital epiphany.
 
I have to wonder: since this scientific paper used alleged same story scenes with different genre related references, where these scenes came from and just how well were those referential words placed and how does that work at all to not affect the flow of the story and if we are not perhaps seeing here the effect of poor writing. The poor writing had varying degrees of readability affecting comprehension from literary to genre fiction. And perhaps poor writing is more acceptable in literary fiction, whereas in genre fiction it won't be tolerated and it turns the reader away from involvement in the story.

The scientific method can and often is abused.
 
dask said:
Heck, we can't even agree on a definition for SF. How can it make us poorer readers if we don't even know what it is?
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The experiment really looked at people's preconceived notions of genre and thus I repeat what I and @dannymcg found as the key finding :):

One of the authors of the paper stated - "So, no, SF doesn’t really make you stupid. It’s more that if you’re stupid enough to be biased against SF you will read SF stupidly."

As for definitions, I agree it's difficult to pinpoint SF, but it is usually pretty easy to read something and say, 'that's SF'. In this case they used key words to trigger people. Whether or not that's a valid, I don't know. It seems more like adding a veneer or sprinkle of 'genre' words to make a passage 'SF'. (Mind you there are plenty of SciFi books that just do that, which could equally well, if terms and descriptions were changed, to be set as an 18th century naval story or a 20th century spy thriller etc...)

 
Serendipity said:
As far as I'm concerned, science fiction and literary fiction are the only strands of fiction that can really make people think.

[Detective stories are what I call puzzles to be solved and whilst interesting in themselves, are not demanding because at the end of the day the puzzle solution is given to you.]
Click to expand...
I fear that your dismissal of detective stories as a genre falls into the same trap as those who dismiss SF as stories about spaceships, rayguns and BEMs.
 
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I think the important quote there is, “While this wouldn’t be true of all readers, for those who are biased against SF, thinking of it as an inferior genre of fiction, they assume the story will be less worthwhile, one that doesn’t require or reward careful reading, and so they read less attentively."

We are already aware of those people, biased against SF. They are very unlikely to read SF and so, presumably, were forced to read SF for the purpose of this study. That would hardly help them to change their minds.

The abstract also says nothing about the sample. How large was it? Were they English department students? Were they approached on the High Street? What age structure? What level of income? These things are all important. Did they normally read books without pictures?
 
The article said there were around 150 participants, but nothing of how they got them. Seeing as they are university professors I assume they dragooned students into doing it. That's how they did it at the psyche dept. at my university at least.
 
As a former psychology student who was pressed ganged into doing experiments I agree with Vince. And I think this actual experiment is pretty bogus. First of all, they should have pulled actual passages from well regarded literature and put them against an equally well regarded piece from Sci fi (Flowers for Algernon is a great example) and then make a test. But that is also intrinsically flaw since two pieces of literature can't even be compared in the first place. Then what kind of readers etc etc. It's just loaded with flaws.

This entire test is one of those examples where the experiment was basically skewed to produce the predicted response. Honestly should be thrown out.
 
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