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 had been teaching general biology for over a decade, eager to convince my students that science is awesome, that it improves the quality of their lives, and that science literacy is essential in today’s world. Biology is the study of life, after all, and science is one of the most reliable ways of knowing. I thought I had a solid case.

Unfortunately, few of my students seemed to agree with me. I wouldn’t (necessarily) say they hated science, but they were certainly sciencephobic.

Too often, non-majors biology is taught like a watered-down version of the introductory course taken by majors. After a very brief introduction to the scientific method, students progress through a survey of the major concepts in biology: molecules, cells, genetics, organisms, and evolution.

I was never a fan of the “baby bio” approach for students not majoring in biology and was constantly on the hunt for something better. I tried countless textbooks, labs, and case studies and frequently included issues relevant to students’ lives to teach important concepts. And yet, my moment of crisis came after we had used genetics and evolution to test the concept of human “races” and were in the process of applying mitosis to cancer.

I tried to make it work. I really did.

But that moment hit me like a ton of bricks. My students were not going to remember, let alone use, what they were learning past the exam. Worse, the fears and anxieties they associated with science would continue to haunt them. I had squandered their one opportunity to gain the empowerment that comes with science literacy and critical thinking. (Like I said … a ton of bricks.)

Why General Education Science?

A common complaint I heard from students was that they shouldn’t need to take a science class because they’re majoring in business, literature, or art … so why should they spend their time (and money) learning about the structure of cell membranes or protein synthesis? And honestly, I could see their point. As much as I find electron transport chains fascinating and worthy of study, I knew what students were really learning was how to memorize information to regurgitate on an exam.

So here it was: my moment of truth. I asked myself: Why are nearly all undergraduate students, regardless of major, required to take science? The obvious answer seemed to be to foster science literacy and critical thinking … but what does that mean?

Thankfully, I stumbled upon a quote by Carl Sagan: “If we teach only the findings and products of science—no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be—without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?”

He was right. Science is so much more than a bunch of facts to memorize. It’s a process. It’s a way of learning about the world, of trying to get closer to the truth by subjecting explanations to testing and critically scrutinizing the evidence. It’s not just what we know; it’s how we know.

Basically, science is good thinking.

Scientifically literate people understand scientific reasoning and are able to draw reasonable conclusions from the available evidence. They are able to evaluate hypotheses, arguments, conclusions, and their own beliefs. And they’re aware of the cognitive biases and logical fallacies that may impact our ability to evaluate evidence and draw fair conclusions.

The good news is that science classes are theoretically the perfect vehicle to teach science literacy and critical thinking, skills that can empower students to make better decisions and inoculate minds against the misinformation and disinformation all too prevalent in our current society.

The bad news is that most general education science classes instead focus on facts. But facts are forgettable and widely available. Plus, the facts they learn in class might even have an expiration date. After all, science is a never-ending process of weeding out bad ideas and building on good ones.

If we don’t teach students the process of science, how will they be able to differentiate between reliable and unreliable claims? Instead of facts, students (and all citizens) need the essential skills of science literacy and critical thinking that will help them navigate today’s world … and tomorrow’s.

The global pandemic has made clear the importance of understanding the nature of scientific inquiry and the value of science to society. Between fake news, alternative facts, science denial, snake oil cures, and conspiracy theories, it’s also made it clear that we need to be doing a better job of teaching our fellow Americans how to think critically (Harrison 2021).

I will fully admit to being part of the problem. I had assumed that, because critical thinking is at the heart of scientific inquiry, I was teaching it in my classes. And of course I was teaching science literacy! I honestly didn’t realize how wrong I was. I wonder how students who took my “baby bio” course all those years ago made sense of the pandemic and if the facts I taught them provided them with the tools to understand coronaviruses or mRNA vaccines or hydroxychloroquine. The world changed. Knowledge changed. They needed skills for the future, and I had failed them.

I started digging to see what other educators were doing and found a team at Sam Houston State University who created an interdisciplinary general education science course designed specifically to teach science literacy and critical thinking (Rowe et al. 2015). I contacted the study’s authors, who shared their wisdom and kindly allowed me to steal parts of their curriculum. I was off to the races!

Rethinking General Education Science: A Backward Design Approach

After concluding that “baby bio” wasn’t meeting our goals for non-science majors, I convinced my institution to replace it with a new course that focuses less on the findings of science and almost exclusively on science literacy and critical thinking. The goals of the course include evaluating evidence for claims to determine how we know something and learning to recognize the characteristics of good science by evaluating bad science, pseudoscience, and science denial. The entire course is centered around empowering students to make better decisions to help them live better lives.

Unlike most science classes that start with the scientific method, I begin with witches. Centuries ago, being accused of witchcraft and “confessing” under torture were sufficient evidence to convict and sentence a person (usually a woman) to death. Because most students today don’t believe that diseases and storms are caused by witches casting spells, they are able to more skeptically examine the supposed evidence and explore why people at the time had such strong beliefs. We like to think of ourselves as rationally following evidence to a conclusion, but more often than not, we form beliefs through irrational ways and look backward for justifications. Our discussion naturally leads to epistemological questions, such as how we know what we know and how knowing is different than believing.

Richard Feynman famously said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” Unfortunately, most of us think we’re immune! To prove to students how easily they can be fooled, I give them astrology-based “personality assessments,” which they nearly all report as being highly accurate. Once they learn everyone received the same results, they realize they’ve been conned. After I apologize and explain why I lied to them, they’re more open to learning skills that can protect them from being fooled, such as skepticism. While many students confuse skepticism with cynicism or denialism, true skepticism is simply proportioning beliefs to the evidence and is therefore an essential characteristic of science.

To equip students with the skills necessary to evaluate claims, I provide them with a toolkit, appropriately summarized by the acronym FiLCHeRS (Lett 1990). The principles in FiLCHeRS (Falsifiability, Logic, Comprehensiveness of evidence, Honesty, Replicability, and Sufficiency of evidence) encapsulate the essence of the scientific method. Through repeated practice, students learn to use scientific reasoning to evaluate claims, because pseudoscientific and unreliable claims fail at least one of the rules in FiLCHeRS.

Next is one of the most important lessons in the course: the limits of perception and memory. For many, personal experiences are the best way to “know” something. Whether it’s believing in UFOs because they’ve “seen” one or that homeopathy is effective because it “worked” for them, we often fail to recognize that our perceptions are subjective and highly biased and that our memories are flawed and unreliable. Understanding this is essential for knowing why anecdotes, including one’s personal experiences, are unreliable evidence.

We then dive into metacognition, or thinking about thinking. Our brains have to process a lot of information, but they’re lazy, so much of it is done on autopilot. This fast, intuitive thinking uses mental short-cuts (i.e., heuristics) that can lead to errors (i.e., cognitive biases) that deviate our thinking from reality. Ultimately, the goal is to teach students how to think better by being aware of how they are thinking and recognizing the limits of what they know.

After students have a better appreciation of how flawed their thinking can be and the importance of skepticism, we turn to information literacy. Information affects how we think and the decisions we make, yet it can be difficult to distinguish reliable from unreliable information. In fact, we are most likely to fall for misinformation when it confirms what we already believe and/or triggers strong emotions. Thankfully, the concepts covered in class thus far provide students with the background knowledge to skeptically evaluate sources and claims online.

While many general education science courses teach students how to read primary literature, I don’t think that’s helpful or necessary. Students should understand the importance of peer review to the process of science, but it’s unrealistic to expect anyone, especially someone who has only taken one or two undergraduate science courses, to rely on jargon-rich articles published in professional journals for making decisions in their daily lives. Instead, it’s important that students recognize the limits of their knowledge and learn how to be good consumers of information more broadly.

By the time I introduce the process of science, students have an understanding of why science is reliable and necessary. To reiterate: science is good thinking. We are all biased and irrational, and at its core, science is a way of knowing that recognizes and corrects for our biases. Consider the double-blind, randomized controlled trials used to test new medications. Every aspect of these studies—such as the blinding, use of placebos, and random sampling—are designed to correct for the cognitive biases that can interfere with determining whether the drug actually works. By building up a justification for science, the logic of the scientific process falls into place.

Speaking of the scientific method, there isn’t one, and we do our students a disservice when we teach it as such. While most textbooks start with a recipe-like formula, from observation to hypothesis to experiment, most science doesn’t follow these steps. Science is a community of experts using diverse methods to gather evidence and scrutinize claims. There are endless ways to do science. For example, not all science uses controlled experiments. Observational science, such as discovery science, historical science, and epidemiology, collects data in the “real world.” Importantly, different types of studies provide different types and qualities of evidence. A broader understanding of the nature of science, which is essentially evidence-based thinking, equips students to evaluate the evidence for any particular claim.

Throughout the course, lectures, quizzes, case studies, and assignments are used to explore real-world issues relevant to students and provide opportunities to practice evaluating claims. Topics include ghosts, psychics, fake news, fad diets, crystal healing, conspiracy theories, Bigfoot, the MMR vaccine and autism “controversy,” homeopathy, astrology, and climate change denial. Many students believe in various forms of pseudoscience, and its inclusion increases engagement and teaches them how to recognize pseudoscience in their daily lives. Importantly, these issues help students understand why it’s important to think critically, because being fooled can lead to real harm.

Finally, many activities are based on inoculation theory, which is similar to how vaccines work but for misinformation. Basically, exposure to a bit of misinformation can help build up immunity to the real thing. In some activities, students use humor to create misinformation, such as an advertisement for a pseudoscientific, alternative medicine product and a discussion in which they use fallacies to argue why they shouldn’t fail the course.

The Bottom Line: Skills Over Content

Undergraduates who aren’t STEM majors may take only one or two science classes, which are often the last chance we have to teach students the science literacy and critical thinking skills necessary to be informed citizens. It is possible to teach these skills, but they can’t just be a component of the curriculum; they have to be the curriculum.

Science literacy is about more than memorizing facts. Instead of teaching students what to think, a good science education teaches them how to think. By emphasizing process over content, students gain the skills necessary to think better and therefore make better decisions. The ability to think critically has never been more important. We owe it to our students (and society) to teach them curiosity, skepticism, and humility.

The premise of this course is intellectual empowerment. I tell students at the end of every class, “Thinking is power. So demand evidence and think critically!”

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to Matthew P. Rowe for his feedback and guidance.

References

Harrison, Guy. 2021. How to repair the American mind: Solving America’s cognitive crisis. Skeptical Inquirer 45(3): 31–34. Available online at /2021/04/how-to-repair-the-american-mind-solving-americas-cognitive-crisis/.

Lett, James. 1990. A field guide to critical thinking. Skeptical Inquirer 14(2): 153–160.

Rowe M.P., B.M. Gillespie, K.R. Harris, et al. 2015. Redesigning a general education science course to promote critical thinking. CBE Life Sciences Education 14: 1–11. Available online at https://www.lifescied.org/doi/pdf/10.1187/cbe.15-02-0032.