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Julia Belluz and Alvin Chang over at Vox.com have an article about a new paper in the Lancet by a team led Dr. Andrew Oxman showing how it is possible to teach children the critical thinking skills needed to detect dubious health claims.
[...] he [Andrew Oxman] began working with other researchers from around the world to develop curricula — a cartoon-filled textbook, lessons plans (sic) — on critical thinking skills aimed at school children.
In 2016, Oxman tested the materials in a big trial involving 10,000 children from 120 primary schools in Uganda's central region.
The results of the trial were just published in the Lancet, and they showed a remarkable rate of success: Kids who were taught basic concepts about how to think critically about health claims massively outperformed children in a control group.
This means Oxman now holds the best blueprint out there for how to get young people to think critically and arm them with the tools they need to spot "alternative facts" and misinformation. His work brings us closer to answering that important question that haunted him — the one that should haunt all of us who care about evidence and facts: How do you prevent fake news and bullshit from catching on in the first place?
The Oxman paper is here (DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(17)31226-6). Orac has his own take on it as well.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday May 25 2017, @07:56PM (9 children)
I'm more inclined to think that it's not human nature to think critically when a convenient answer exists. And they do teach critical thinking in schools. I got the core elements of critical analysis at least a half dozen times over my public school education, in several completely different contexts. I'm going to assume, perhaps unfairly, that others did too.
My conclusion: knowing about the "rules" of critical thinking doesn't make one a critical thinker. Having the simplistic answers you're given too easily fail you over and over and cause you actual pain might? Maybe?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @08:04PM (5 children)
Sure, just like they also teach mathematics and science; they just don't teach any of them well. Our K-12 school system is an unmitigated disaster.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday May 25 2017, @08:13PM (4 children)
My own inclination, looking at improvement rates, is that it's a mitigated disaster.
There's all sorts of toxic threads of idiocy weaving their way into the schools of the US, but by the standards we were judging ourselves on in the "good old days": literacy, drop-out rates, teen pregnancy, college-readiness, we're doing pretty well.
Not as good as a proper first-world nation, mind you, but pretty good. Also we're not what I'd deem "economically competitive for the 21st century", but the fall of the American Empire is pretty much set at this point, so fuck it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @08:15PM (2 children)
If you look at the example in the paper, "thinking critically" amounts to "don't take medical advice from a talking parrot". I think the average US educated person has passed that point.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday May 25 2017, @08:53PM (1 child)
What on earth about the average educated person in the US that you've met convinces you of that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @09:22PM
Can you find any drug commercials that use talking parrots?
In contrast, choosing insurance seems to require a lower threshold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaEFUwt5eT8 [youtube.com] (top comment: "I just switched to geico only because of this commercial. litterally not saving anything at all, but this parot convinced me geico is all i need in life. thanks geico.")
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @08:41PM
There are no "good old days".
Literacy is a basic skill and important, but it's not impressive. Well-educated people would ideally be 'college-ready' anyway, so there would be no need to focus specifically on that, but most of our colleges aren't that much better than our abysmal K-12 schools. I don't care about drop-out rates at the moment, since our school system is terrible and I fully understand why people would drop-out; graduating just is not an impressive accomplishment and signifies almost nothing. The real question is whether or not the vast majority of people leave the K-12 school system with a deep understanding of the material that the schools supposedly taught them. That is highly doubtful, since most of the focus is on rote memorization and teaching to the test, so it is rare for people to be guided in the direction of understanding subjects like mathematics. We are not encouraging people to be academics here.
In other words, the standards of the "good old days" are utterly pathetic. That is not how we should be measuring our success.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday May 25 2017, @11:15PM (2 children)
They hand you a bag of tools but don't teach you how to apply them to the problem at hand. They need to not only have the tools but be shown how they might apply. In many cases there are a lot of variables and value judgments to be made.
A lot of people fail there in medicine. Great, so X is 10% more effective than Y. What does that mean? What are the consequences if Y isn't effective in my case? Can I try Y and then switch to X if I am one of the people Y isn't effective for? Perhaps not important if X and Y cost about the same, but quite often in medicine, X costs many times what Y costs and has a much shorter safety record. Perhaps X claims to have only half the chance of causing an itchy rash. Perhaps Y only has a 1 in 10,000 chance in the first place. If the rash tends to clear in a day or 2, is it worth $1000 to half that 1 in 10000 chance?
Many people don't even realize that many doctors don't consider cost at all.
Naturally, other situations should also be examined in class.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday May 25 2017, @11:31PM
I get what you're saying, but this is definitely a "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink" situation.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Friday May 26 2017, @07:15AM
One of my favorites is an ad going around for a diet pill. You don't have to change anything. Just take our pill and lose 400% more weight!
Ummm... If I do not change anything, I do not lose any weight. Zero. Ummm. 400% of zero is... ummm still zero. So they are right. Spend my money for their pills and still lose no weight. But their ad did not lie. I did lose 400% of nothing.
They used the math word "PerCent!", so its gotta be a good scientific study!. Oh look! Cardassians! Gotta go!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]