Wikipedia is a major source of information for many people. However, it is known that Wikipedia articles do not always contain factually accurate material. Teun Lucassen of the University of Twente is attempting to find out how much faith people have in the reliability of Wikipedia articles. One of his recent studies has shown that even if an article contains serious factual errors, this does little to dent people's confidence in that article, even when those involved are experts in the field. In Mr Lucassen's view, the study shows that people scan such content in a very superficial way, and that they usually blindly believe what they read there.
As part of his research, Lucassen manipulated the content of various articles on car engines. In effect, he introduced significant factual errors into the text. He then asked his experimental subjects to read the articles in question. Half of these individuals were experts in that field while the remainder had no such specialised knowledge. Some members of the group were given a copy of the original text. Others were presented with a manipulated version of the text, in which up to fifty percent of the "facts" were incorrect.
As expected, the mistakes did nothing to dent the non-experts' confidence in the content of the text. After all, at the technical level, they were quite unable to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate information. While the experts did experience a decline in confidence, this proved to be very small indeed. In some manipulated articles, half of the claims were incorrect and even the definition given in the article was wrong. Nevertheless, about 65 percent of the experts still had confidence in the accuracy of the article, compared with just over 80 percent for the original article. The study included a group of 657 test subjects.
In Mr Lucassen's view, the study shows that people scan the articles' content in a very superficial way, and that they usually blindly believe what they read there. Another group distrusts all information on Wikipedia, as a matter of principle.
RESEARCH
The study was conducted by Teun Lucassen and Prof. Jan Maarten Schraagen of the Department of Cognitive Psychology & Ergonomics (CPE). The results will be published shortly in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
NOTE TO THE PRESS
For further details, or a digital version of the article entitled "Factual Accuracy and Trust in Information; The Role of Expertise", please contact Joost Bruysters (+31-(0)53 489 2773/+31-(0)6 1048 8228).
