(Escaping) the paradox of scientific storytelling
Open accessAbstract
Compelling stories about science can motivate people to engage and respond to relevant problems facing society. While science plays a unique role in society, providing the best available evidence for policy choices, understanding the world, and informing citizens' daily lives, it does not hold any intrinsic advantage in creating captivating stories for mass audiences. Instead, science must compete with other storytellers, many of whom are not bound to scientific evidence. This presents a paradox-how can science preserve its credibility as curator of knowledge while engaging audiences with a communication format that is agnostic to truth?
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Humans are storytelling creatures who understand and retain information more effectively when it is embedded in narrative form.
“humans are, at their core, storytelling creatures 63,83 , who understand and retain information more effectively when it is embedded in narrative form”
From Quantifying the prevalence and impact of overreaching causal claims in social science (2026) · cites this paper as [83]
The Introduction says narrative thinking is the default mode of human thought and that experience is often stored as narrative cases. The “Knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors” section says narratives can help transmit scientific knowledge, but the paper does not establish that people understand or retain information more effectively in narrative form than in other forms. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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Sorted by citations
Quantifying the prevalence and impact of overreaching causal claims in social science
Isch, C., Dörr, T., Fasching, N., Jennings, G., & Watts, D. J. (2026) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02553-x
- Authors
- Dahlstrom, M. F., & Scheufele, D. A.
- Affiliations
- Iowa State University (US)
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Corresponding author
- Dahlstrom, Michael F.
- Venue
- PLOS Biology
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2018-10-09
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- e2006720
- ISSN
- 1544-9173 (ISSN-L)
- 1545-7885
- PMC
- PMC6177122
- OpenAlex
- W2897047190
- Cited by
- 54
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 8.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS Biology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change Communication and Perception
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Science and Science Education
- Keywords
- science communication, storytelling, public engagement with science, scientific credibility, mass audience
- MeSH terms
- Attitude, Behavior, Communication, Humans, Science, Knowledge, Comprehension
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