When we said that scientists had not yet explained the glowing rocks

When we said that scientists had not yet explained the glowing rocks
and then asked our respondents how well they understood how such rocks glow, they reported not understanding at all — a very natural response given that they knew nothing about the rocks.
One consequence of the fact that knowledge is distributed this way is
that being part of a community of knowledge can make people feel as if they understand things they don’t.
This line of thinking leads to explanations of the hoodwinked masses
that amount to little more than name calling: “Those people are foolish” or “Those people are monsters.”
Such accounts may make us feel good about ourselves, but they are misguided and simplistic: They reflect a misunderstanding of knowledge
that focuses too narrowly on what goes on between our ears.
People fail to distinguish what they know from what others know
because it is often impossible to draw sharp boundaries between what knowledge resides in our heads and what resides elsewhere.
But when we told another group about the same discovery, only this time claiming
that scientists had explained how the rocks glowed, our respondents reported a little bit more understanding.
They are the authors of the forthcoming “The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone.”
A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 5, 2017, on Page SR11 of the New York edition with the headline: Why We Believe Obvious Untruths.
Recently, one of us ran a series of studies in which we told people about some new scientific discoveries that we fabricated, like rocks that glow.