It’s important to address the issue at a young age, said Osborne, who began his career as a science teacher in the 1970s and is one of the authors of A Framework for K-12 Science Education, the basis for the Next Generation Science Standards. Adults can be especially reluctant to abandon or even question their personal misinformation, he said, especially if those beliefs are tied up with their politics or personal identity.
Osborne and Pimentel are the lead authors of Science Education in an Age of Misinformation, a 2022 report exploring the threat posed by scientific misinformation and how it can be addressed. In the report, they lay out strategies to prepare students to cope with dubious claims, including revising the curriculum, better preparing and equipping teachers, and assessing students’ capabilities in this area.
For starters, the researchers say, students should know how to check the reliability of a source. That task often starts with three key questions: Who is providing this information, how do they know it, and what are they trying to sell? At a fundamental level, Osborne said, it’s often more important to evaluate a source than the actual claim. If the source doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, it’s safe (and generally wise) to disregard everything else.
To guard against questionable sources, students have to be taught how to navigate the internet and interpret search results, Osborne said. Internet skills should be purposefully taught throughout primary and secondary school: Students should know how to tailor search terms to get the most reliable results, how to spot sponsored content, and how to quickly identify the most credible information in a sea of results. The report details strategies used by professional fact checkers to evaluate sources online, citing research and materials developed by the Stanford History Education Group.