‘I invite you to take a sip from the golden fountain and confirm these statements for yourself’: preparing undergraduate science students to publicly address pseudoscientific news

ABSTRACT

This exploratory study examines an instructional activity in which undergraduate biology students at a Canadian university who, after receiving instruction from an expert science communicator on how to publicly address pseudoscience in online media, were asked to research online a pseudoscientific news of their choice, demonstrate how they would publicly address a pseudoscience-believing audience, and self-assess their communicative performances. An analysis of students’ written reflections showed that participation in this activity fostered recognition of the importance of dialogue, with most students adopting an audience-centered (dialogic) stance that took into account the public’s interpersonal needs (respect, empathy), communicative needs (comprehensible input) and epistemic needs (scientific knowledge). Yet, inspection of video-recordings of their oral presentations revealed that some students took a combative communicative approach – communicated in ways that suggested a confrontational attitude toward the public that was inconsistent with their dialogic views. Acknowledging interpersonal difficulties associated with the act of implementing their dialogical views, these students stressed the challenging nature of public science communication about fake news. It is argued that, fully developing communicative competence to address fake news requires extended and sustained instruction that allows students to progressively hone their communication skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Undergraduate science communication education
• public science communication about fake news
• pseudoscientific news in online media

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics statement

The authors declare that this project received Research Ethics Board approval at the University of Ottawa.