Scientific Thinking for All: A Toolkit

Unit 5: Skills for Evaluating Information

Unit 5

Summary

Coming Soon!

Teacher Video Resources

Summary

© Nobel Prize Outreach Ill. Christina Heitmann

In this unit, students will learn and practice skills to help them evaluate a variety of information that they encounter in their lives, such as online information, social media posts, scientific investigations, and everyday situations. Students practice skills to help them determine whether information is factual and analyze the conclusions that are drawn from it. Students discuss the role of different types of cognition, such as cognitive shortcuts and biases (including confirmation bias), and consider the impact of these types of cognition on health decisions on individuals, scientific research, and society. Students will practice slow thinking techniques and an actively open mindset, which can be used to reduce the errors from fast thinking and cognitive biases when evaluating information and making decisions. 

Unit Driving Question

How can people effectively evaluate information for everyday decisions, such as those for health and disease?

Cognitive Shortcuts & Biases

Human cognition is vulnerable to error because of processing limitations and motivational biases. Students can learn to avoid these traps by using systematic strategies of logical and statistical thinking.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias makes people slow to reconsider or change their ideas, even when there are strong reasons to do so. Students need to learn to recognize this temptation and counter it using Actively Open Thinking.

Active Open Mindset

Actively open-minded thinking involves the willingness to search for evidence against one’s favored beliefs, plans, or goals, and to weigh such evidence fairly when it is available. This intellectual virtue helps counteract confirmation bias and other cognitive biases.

Coming Soon!

Unit 5 is currently under production and will be available in the summer of 2026

Teacher Video Resources

Curriculum Quick Start

Scientific
Thinking
for All

Scientific thinking for all: a toolkit is a high school adaptation of the University of California, Berkeley, “Big Ideas” course titled Sense and Sensibility and Science. It was developed by professors Saul Perlmutter, John Campbell, and Robert MacCoun and represents a collaboration among physics, philosophy, and psychology.

Scientific thinking for all: a toolkit was developed by curriculum developers and researchers at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California. The initiative is a cooperation between Nobel Prize Outreach (NPO) and Saul Perlmutter. This work is supported by a consortium of funders including Griffin Catalyst, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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