Author: Melanie Trecek-King
Melanie Trecek-King is an associate professor of biology at Massasoit Community College. Her website is www.ThinkingIsPower.com.
Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking: What Do We Really Mean?
Most people agree that critical thinking is an important skill that should be taught in schools. And most educators think they teach critical thinking. I know I did. After all, I was a science educator, and science is critical thinking. Isnât it? For years, I taught general-education biology, a course commonly taken by undergraduates who …
This article is available for free to all.A Life Preserver for Staying afloat in a Sea of Misinformation | Melanie Trecek-King
Critical thinking and science literacy are essential for surviving the infodemic but can be difficult skills to learn and apply. Registration is now open for CSICon 2024: https://csiconference.org/ The FLOATER toolkit was developed to provide a structured and systematic way to think through claims. The toolkitâs seven key principlesâFalsifiability, Logic, Objectivity, Alternative Explanations, Tentative Conclusions, …
Inoculating Students against Misinformation by Having Them Create It
We are drowning in misinformation. From wellness influencers making wildly inaccurate and baseless nutrition claims to fringe medical âprofessionalsâ selling pseudoscientific âtreatmentsâ online to conspiracy theorists enticing followers down the rabbit hole on YouTube, itâs nearly impossible to avoid exposure. The spread of misinformation has gotten so out-of-control that experts are calling it an âinfodemic.â …
This article is available for free to all.Anticipating CSICon 2023: A Video Interview with Melanie Trecek-King
This is the first in a series of interviews I will be conducting with the speakers appearing at CSICon 2023. This conference is run by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and will take place in Las Vegas from October 26â29. (You can find all the details and register right here.) For this first interview, my guest was …
Inoculating Students Against Misinformation | Melanie Trecek-King
The spread of misinformation has reached epidemic proportions. Thankfully, science has found a solution, inoculation theory, which applies the logic of vaccines to misinformation. Join us on Thursday, June 8 at 7:00 p.m. ET for a free online presentation by Melanie Trecek-King. âInoculating Students Against Misinformationâ focuses on active, technique-based inoculation, in which students learn the techniques used to mislead …
How to Sell Pseudoscience
We live in interesting times. Humanityâs scientific knowledge has grown exponentially, allowing us to live longer, healthier lives than ever. Due to technological advances, we have access to nearly all that knowledge on devices we carry in our pockets. Yet at the same time, health pseudoscience is flourishing. From homeopathy to reiki to urine therapy, …
This article is available for free to all.A Life Preserver for Staying Afloat in a Sea of Misinformation
In a world full of misinformation, being able to critically evaluate claims is empowering. Good thinking is the best way to protect ourselves from being fooled (or even harmed) by misinformation. The problem is: where do we start? The necessary skills, critical thinking and science literacy, are difficult to master⊠and to apply. To address …
A Life Preserver for Staying Afloat in a Sea of Misinformation
My goals as a science educator are to teach students the essential skills of science literacy and critical thinking. Helping them understand the process of science and how to draw reasonable conclusions from the available evidence can empower them to make better decisions and protect them from being fooled or harmed. Yet while educators agree …
This article is available for free to all.Teach Skills, Not Facts
The moment is burned into my brain like a flashbulb memory: I was teaching Introduction to Biology, a general education class for students not majoring in science. It was near the end of the semester, and, having just covered basic genetics, I was lecturing on the stages of mitosis. My students looked completely deflated. I …
This article is available for free to all.