Current Research Interests: My research investigates scientific explanation. What is an explanation? What makes an explanation a good one, or a satisfying one? Are some explanations objectively better than others? Do people find certain explanations easier to understand than others?

In particular, I'm interested in what characteristics people think a good explanation should have and whether these characteristics conform to the opinions of experts in the field. A current project asks people to rate multiple explanations for the same scientific phenomenon. We believe that people will reliably rate a subset of these explanations higher than others, even though these ratings may be in opposition to what experts think.

For more information about this project or other research interests, please visit my website at http://pantheon.yale.edu/~dls73/.