Making Evidence-Driven Decisions in a Media-Driven World

How many times have you heard or read a story about a new scientific advancement? Every day, we get new information about health and science. It is on websites, social media, television, and newspapers. It can be hard to know what to believe. Sometimes, it may sound like a great advancement or something that is too good to be true. Other times, it seems like it is completely opposite to other information that you have heard.

How can we know what is valid?

BSCS Science Learning has released new curriculum modules for middle school and high school students with this challenge in mind. The goal of these freely available materials is to help students learn strategies that they can use to evaluate the health-related information that they see or hear in the media. Through the five lessons, students gain experience in finding, analyzing, and communicating about health information. Although the modules focus on health-related examples, the strategies they learn can be applied to many areas of life that require good decision-making skills.

Overview of Lessons

This project was supported by the Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health under award number R25OD020208. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.