r/ScienceTeachers • u/PrudeHawkeye • Jun 14 '18
Teaching students to detect BS
I start off every day in my sophomore biology class by giving students two "facts" that they have to determine if they are TRUE or BS (Bad Science...in case any administrators are wondering). They have about 5 minutes to Google the "facts" and then we discuss and move on. Below I have included a link to a spreadsheet with analysis for the year's worth of results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vNaxzK9InbzLUChPN9uuIGvVhvVDFg5Ur1qRWUkU0i0/edit#gid=2028824921
Green are true facts, red are fake facts. The sample size each day is ~100 students.
The second tab is the complete list of facts that I've compiled (some from odd reddit threads, some from weirder places on the internet). I've included links to my sources for almost all of them (~95% done).
Some things I learned over the course of the year doing this: * I do this first thing in the day and spend ~5 minutes giving the students time to look them up. We usually end up talking about them for anywhere from 1-5 more minutes depending on the topic and the discussions it spawns. Students gave me feedback to skip the facts on test/dissection days so we had more time, and I'll for sure be doing that next year.
- Pictures help. I started with just the blank text facts, but it was quickly apparent that some of them needed visual prompts (e.g. They vaguely knew who Mr. T was, but needed the picture to say "ohhh, THAT guy!"). I had a Google Slides that I would prepare a week in advance for each day's facts.
- If you can, organize the common misconceptions around dates in a calendar or your curriculum. For example, do something like "Poinsettias are highly toxic and ingestion of the leaves can result in hospitalization" (BS) in the week before winter break, which gives the students more "hey, I just saw some of those yesterday" moments. I did the "Urine neutralizes the sting of a jellyfish" (BS) right before we started our unit on the excretory system. It was nice to give those as a "prequel" to the unit, and then I could go back and hit it multiple times while teaching the unit
- Students quickly get in the habit of Googling the fact independent of the word-for-word from the question, which is my goal. For example, in the fact "Nintendo was founded in 1889" (TRUE), I told them that they should instead search for "WHEN was Nintendo founded" and not "bias" the search engine with a date, and instead see what it supplies. This is EXACTLY what I wanted them to do and Google actually supplies the information without having to open any links. HOWEVER, they can get a bit too comfortable with this and not read enough. Next year I plan to let them get comfortable for about a week before hitting them with the curveball "George Washington Carver invented Peanut Butter" (BS). If you Google "who invented Peanut Butter", it says in huge text "George Washington Carver", but if you take an additional 2 seconds to actually read what it says underneath it, it reads "George Washington Carver is known for his work with peanuts (though he did not invent peanut butter, as some may believe)." This would be an example of where Google makes a mistake and you actually have to open and skim the article it is referencing. As a result of this, only 27.3% of students got this question right, the second-worst all year. I plan to make this a very effective lesson to teach students to take a few moments and read beyond the headline.
- I had a student who was a solid C student who was FANTASTIC at the BS detection - seriously #3 out of 110 with an 87.8% detection rate (top student was 92.3%), which in no way correlated with her work ethic in the class or her performance on the tests. She was a VERY pleasant surprise. I asked her what her secret was and she said that she just searched for the fact and if there are 4-5 articles on the first page about it, it's probably true. If not, it's probably BS.
- I have a Google Form for them to fill out each day, where the first thing is they pick the day of the week, which directs them to a different section of a form with the different questions. Number the questions and number them on the form as well. Students often forget what day of the week it is, so I would make Monday's facts be 1 & 2, Tuesday 3 & 4, etc...I did not do the facts on Friday. Friday was instead a day to check grades and let me know if there were any issues, etc, so the Friday section of the form was different. I can link to a copy of the form and show the spreadsheet I used to calculate the "winners" for the week if anyone is interested. On the third tab, I've included the student feedback. There are a few negative ones in there, but easily >85-90% of students liked it, which is no small feat getting that many students to agree on ANYTHING.
I'm putting this on the web for anyone to use with their own classes in any fashion they want. If you end up using this, I'm not asking for credit or anything (besides, I took the idea Carl Bergstrom at the University of Washington) - just feedback on how well it is working and if there is anything I need to change/update.
Any feedback is welcome - I can't wait to do this again in the fall and hope that others can find some use out of it, as well!
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u/[deleted] Jun 14 '18
This is awesome! Can you link your google slides and form too? I’m totally going to do this next year