This is becoming a bit of a meme amongst the scientific set.
Eat your own dog food, I say.
Who will be the first to publish their research in 8pt Brush Script?
That should scare off the intelligent designers.

This is becoming a bit of a meme amongst the scientific set.

More like among hack science journalists.

Anyway, the real problem here is that nobody has noticed that readers do better with engaging content than bland content. Typography doesn’t have to be bad to be engaging. And I suspect that good writing would solve the problem even more handily—as the success of J. K. Rowling and George R. R. Martin at getting young people to read long books shows us.

We've been through this before. Comprehension is going to be affected by visual readability of the text, interest of the reader, effort of the reader, quality of the writing, and time on task. As I believe those who did the study don't control for time on task and other variables, it is worthless to tell us about type.

Prior research has shown that a difficult-to-read font promotes analytic thinking by forcing volunteers to slow down and deliberate more carefully about the meaning of what they are reading.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-critical-thinkers-l...
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We can finally recognize the designers responsible for junk mail and ransom notes as the brilliant masterminds they truly are.

I may mock reading science, but I do like the idea of “visual priming”, which is an important part of graphic design.

"...a hard to read font "...promotes analytic thinking by forcing volunteers to slow down and deliberate more carefully...".

Are not most people with time to volunteer for studies attention challenged to begin with?

"People in the study discussed in the article expressed less belief in God compared to those who read material in a "clear" or easy to read font. "

It's news that God is a type designer?

"Maybe we have been doing this all wrong."

You don't believe what's good for most people is all right?

Incidentally, it has also occurred to me that there is no need for people to start using wretched typefaces for science textbooks. After all, such tomes usually feature a large number of equations, and these will slow down the flow of reading enough that even the most beautiful, legible, and readable typeface will not result in the absence of opportunity to pause and think analytically along the way.

I think if you need to force people to read boring and/or poorly written content it probably makes sense to slow them down to deliberative reading with a low-readability font. But you can't do that for a long period - it's physically too tiring.

Content that a reader will enjoy is what separates the real text fonts from the pretenders, and it's where type designers can push the envelope.

hhp

Exactly, display beer.

hhp

How about the header font here at Typophile? Attractive, yet difficult to read. Making such fonts in a variety of styles should be no hill for the climbers around here.

Let historical romance novels continue to be set in fonts that let the content be forgettable. But bring out the sharp tools for the works where it is important that the content be comprehended and remembered, not just consumed.

@Nick Shinn

I organized a beer-tasting at a party once.
The winning beer was a strong, sweet “amber” brew.
The kind of thing that tasted good to sip, but not what most people would drink by the pint.

How very true. I once bought a six-pack of Samiclaus Brown—because that's the only purchase option offered—because it is one very stout brew. How strong? 24% ABV strong—about as strong as beer gets.

Unfortunately, I really couldn’t swallow more than a sip at a time, which kind of takes the enjoyment out of the process, so I ended up making half-and-halfs with a pleasant smooth ale. Well, half-and-half was better, but not ideal, so I found an acceptable balance at three-to-one. The net result was more mixer than the star of the show, and a net ABV of 7-8% or so…which I could achieved with Moretti Birra La Rossa, which tastes mighty nice right out of the bottle—if you happen to like seriously malty brews with a great finish and a bit of a kick, which I do—and costs about a third as much.

So, you live and learn. I just wish that it hadn't cost me twenty-five bucks for "the good stuff" plus the cost of the mixer—another twenty-five bucks or so—to learn that, yes, you actually can get too much of a good thing. As I recall, this guy named Aristotle figured that out a long time ago. Hey, Lozos: what's up with you Greek guys, anyhow? How come you always seem to have the right answers? Except when it comes to paying taxes…

BTW, Nick, Taxidermy, in ancient Greek, means "The Art of Telling the Tax Man to Go Stuff it"

I'll give this one more try, since there are people here who could make a real difference in people's lives.

Science is, apparently, breaking new ground in investigating how the type in which text is set can influence not only legibility and readability, but also finding that characteristics of the typeface can have a substantial impact, a significant difference, on the ability of the reader to "get" the content - to understand the meaning, to comprehend the ideas being conveyed – and to remember it.

The science is rough. So far, all that is clear is that significant improvement is possible. The body of knowledge will be refined over time to more specific statements about what characteristics a typeface should have.

This is an opportunity for type designers to "move up the value chain", to use business language: from legibility, readability, and appearance; to include comprehension, understanding, and retention. It is an opportunity that some type designers will not miss. Yet I get the impression here is that people are not interested – to the point of ridiculing the concept.

The question for a designer is, do I commit to create typefaces that promote the ability to learn? Or do I ignore the opportunity (some might say "and responsibility") and do as I please?

Ldavidson: "The science is rough"

There are four things that nearly every reading study has in common: it does not involve actual reading, it tests a single script, the number and diversity of the subjects is challenged, and there is no typographer involved in the composition of the test materials.

How do you define rough?

I think we're, well, most people here, are being kind. And quite a few give generously of their time away from their curves, lines and clients to study and discuss these studies and discussions.

"...there are people here who could make a real difference in people's lives."

Could you elaborate on this, please?

Cheers.

Nick,

If you live in the DC area, perhaps we can do lunch some time?

@Old Nick:
Linux. Or, in the other direction, Internet Explorer.

But so many fonts are already free or very cheap that I doubt that any further efforts of that nature in this area would have much effect, even if the idea in general is not crazy.

Thanks Nick,
Gene may find me one pun shy of a load but I am game :-)

PS: I used to play drums in a former life so I can supply my own rim-shots ;-)

Chris—

You—but, especially your trap drum—are the answer to my dreams. How often does that happen to YOU, Bub? Unfortunately, I have not heard back from Gene yet, but I feel compelled to drop him ANOTHER line, because his regular piece in the WP Sunday Magazine was SO spot-on, it would be a crime not to praise him unduly. I figure I show up in his inbox on an annoyingly frequent basis, he is going to do ANYTHING to shut me the frock up, even if it means "doing lunch"—the hilarious implications of which are FAR too numerous to mention—with a COUPLE of loony type guys—who are at least partly, if not wholly Greek. Capisce?

BTW, what is the Greek equivalent for "capisce," anyway? I don't want to give all the credit for snappy sayings to the modern-day equivalent of second-rate Greeks. {insert Greek equivalent here}?

Anyhow, on topic—for a change—the only problem with the premise of this post is that it suggests—at least, to me, so you KNOW it is totally nuts—that bad booze may, therefore, be expected to give you a better buzz. A better hangover, maybe—which brings up the paradoxical question: is there any such thing as a good hangover? Other than a dead hangover? Why am I asking you this? I guess, it's better than talking to myself…

For sure…

HVB, if I may be so presumptuous as to call you by your acronym—

Thanks. If there is any possible way to put a shortcut to this file on my Firefox toolbar, I am going to find it.
THAT is how hilarious I find myself from time to time. Frankly, it's a little too often to suit mine goodly wife, if you catch my drift…

Chris,

The latter is more my style, since being adrift is more my style. When we actually do the lunch thing, you will need to clue me in on the proper pronunciation: my English is bad enough, having grown up in Texas…το 'πιασες?

@dberlow: "rough" in a couple of ways: in its infancy, with mistakes and gaps and the groping that usually occurs during that stage, and because the relationship is not being directly investigated, to be understood, refined, and used, at least in the few studies I've seen. Gray Courier on white is not where this will lead.

"Make a real difference" because I think the effect they see is real, i.e. there is a significant relationship between a typeface (and its setting, and page composition) and comprehension and retention. And the relationship is not pretty&smooth = better. Given that, people who love type could be:

1) engaging the (few) science-ish people active in this area: providing feedback, exchange of knowledge (I know, there needs to be funding for serious work), in general furthering the science to get beyond the very primitive position of today - like addressing the 4 items you mention.

2) once it's better understood how to support comprehension and retention by type design, embracing those concepts and applying them to at least some typeface designs and promoting their use when appropriate.

I would not be surprised if testing showed a 10-20% improvement in learning, given a design based on a sophisticated understanding of how type influences the mind. There aren't many occupations in the world that can do that much direct good for large numbers of people.

But type selection cannot be done well enough yet, because type design isn't there yet.

hhp

There has never been a scientific study that indicated that "type design isn't there yet". Studies compare existing faces by "attempting [badly] " to isolate variables. Since science has never had a typeface that is the "dog-gonned best possible ever" to use as a benchmark for all the others, there is no way to know that the types we have available now are not good enough to read well. I think the best tests to do would be those that compared READERS to each-other instead of typefaces. Why do some people read so much better than others? If we could isolate the perception and comprehension variables that make people read better, then we might have a clue as to how type must be designed better for reading [if need be]. In medical science, we compare well rats with sick rats to see what makes them resist a sickness. Then, the knowledge gained is used to develop cures or vaccines. We don't compare collections of mixed diseases to see which is the least harmful to a given organism.
Other than dyslexia and other physical/neurological conditions, we really have done little to differentiate between perception/interpretation conditions that may exist in what we might call normal spectrum reading sample populations.

Scientists and their adherents have a naïve view of typography if they think that psychological testing can be used to improve it.

It’s one thing to explore the physiological process of reading, quite another to attempt to optimize reading by applying scientific theory.

On the other hand, Nick, insights from the exploration of the physiological process of reading can suggest typographic experiments, i.e. not applying scientific theory to optimisation of reading, but applying new typographic hypotheses to design. And because design is not science in the modern methodological sense -- although, in the mediaeval sense, inter scientias non minima est typographica --, the experimental strictures are looser (hopefully tighter, though, than those of the 'experimental typography' of the mid-90s, which mostly lacked even hypotheses, let alone observation or conclusion).