[Jtsummers]

I wouldn't say it's more effective, but rather that it's a great addition to note taking and active reading. Those activities are what drive my Anki use (or flashcards in general, though my use of physical cards has essentially dropped to zero, I sometimes make them but turn them into Anki notes within a week). But Anki itself is "just" a mechanism for automating the review and tracking of those notes and flashcards. You could (and I have) done the same thing with a stack of physical index cards.

Blindly entering data into Anki without a base comprehension is not a terribly effective way to understand it. You could turn an entire encyclopedia into Anki cards and memorize it, but never properly connect the dots between the things you've learned.