ESPM3921: Science and Critical Thinking for Understanding Our World

Today more than ever we must deal with multiple sources of conflicting information on topics that affect our lives in big ways. We use this information to make important decisions, from major policy decisions to personal lifestyle choices. Understanding complex, high-stakes societal issues such as the global COVID-19 pandemic requires that we rapidly process and synthesize new science that is changing fast, and that we do so in an environment of partisan bias and media spin that make it extremely difficult for citizens to stay informed and make good decisions. The debate surrounding the response to COVID-19, climate change, water policy, and other planetary and human health issues, invoke moral or ethical principles in addition to scientific arguments. As a result, problem solving and decision making requires simultaneously evaluating complex scientific and ethical arguments. Several aspects of human psychology mean that we do not reliably make logical choices when presented with complex information. Furthermore, data and science are frequently used to mislead, from the naïve misuse of statistics to deliberate misinformation campaigns. As a result, weighing evidence and rational decision-making for complex issues requires skepticism, critical thinking, and lots of practice. In this course, students will develop critical thinking tools and cultivate scientific skepticism for evaluating claims encountered in peer-reviewed scientific papers, popular press articles, or on social media. Examples and case studies will draw heavily on current events surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and associated societal and environmental responses, but will also include other environmental, health, and public policy issues to demonstrate the range of ways in which data and science can be used or misused to support a position. To create the necessary habits of mind for skepticism and critical thinking, this course will cover background material from ethics, neurology, behavioral economics, statistics, and logic. We will employ a number of active learning strategies, and class meetings will frequently consist of students actively engaged in processing and understanding course content. Upon leaving this course students will be able to confidently evaluate the veracity of information as they encounter it in multiple contexts throughout their lives. Students will understand how views of the role of ethics in scientific inquiry have evolved, and the roles of science, uncertainty, and ethics in determining public opinion and policy decisions on environmental topics. Students will learn to identify and recognize misinformation in its various forms and to articulate why a particular piece of information is misleading. We will explore the various ways that our intuition and memory make interpreting data and statistics challenging, and develop tools and habits of mind to overcome these challenges.

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