What do students need to know to recognize and combat science misinformation?
Douglas Allchin (2022) has enunciated ten key competencies we should target in education.
It’s dangerous out there, folks. Science misinformation is all over those internets, and society needs to do a better job of teaching people how to spot and avoid it. Douglas Allchin has been focused on this for quite a while, and has identified ten key competencies people need to develop. Now, these competencies are pretty deep and therefore unlikely to be learned via a quick video or game. Such initiatives have their merits, but what Allchin is proposing is more of a set of learning objectives for a many-week course on the ideas. Really important work. Personally, I’d love to see these competencies woven into K-12 STEM curricula, interleaved with content.
Update: many thanks to Dylan Smith for finding that the paper can be found on Douglas’ website.