Carl Bialik summarises a recent paper describing how people are easily seduced by mathematics. The study suggests that when a reader encounters data they don’t technically understand (e.g a complex equation), this actually increases their confidence in the overall conclusion of the data. Interestingly, this observation was made not from lay-readers, but from professional scientists:

“Research has shown that even those who should be especially clear-sighted about numbers—scientific researchers, for example, and those who review their work for publication—are often uncomfortable with, and credulous about, mathematical material”.

Empirical but unsurprising. And the phenomena doesn’t stop with mathematics. I’m not sure why, but any data that’s beyond one’s technical knowledge always looks more impressive. There is something naively seductive about a bonkers multicoloured-multivarient-multidimensional vector graphic induced from a technique you've never heard of.

As a student my peers and I often hypothesised that in order to get a paper into Nature/Science you had to have at least one figure that no one understands.