Comment by playpause

No you’re not alone in it. But yes there are plenty of us who find it a really effective way to get drawn into an article. It works for me through infectious enthusiasm. If I have a sense of a curious mind trying to figure something out, I get interested in the thing they’re trying to figure out too. Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything made me interested in tons of scientific areas I never considered interesting before, because it is all about fascinating people repeatedly failing then eventually succeeding in understanding some natural phenomenon. The human angle is the perfect gateway for me. Maybe if I had more discipline I could just force myself to start reading a dry, factual scientific article in a field of little immediate interest to me until I start to notice data points that pique my own curiosity. But it’s so much easier for me to get infected with the curiosity of some compelling character who is overflowing with it. And it sticks better in the memory.

If it’s a field I already have a strong personal interest/background in, then I generally just want to get straight to the findings, so in that case I wouldn’t read a long form popsci article like this one. But calories/diet/exercise stuff? For me that’s not very exciting, yet I do want to understand it better (for practical benefit), so anything that helps pique my curiosity in it is good.