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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: 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]