Interpreting Scientific Evidence · Biological Sciences
Basic epidemiological concepts, how to spot and decipher through misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information in the news. Heavy emphasis on how to spot and analyze misleading graphs and statistics.
I liked the unique perspective of the course. I thought it was very applicable to my daily life.
I learned how to analyze representations of scientific information in media.
This course taught me the fundamentals of how to interpret scientific research articles, how to identify shortcomings of various methods of conducting research, and how to distinguish fact from false or misleading information. While this is a biology class, so much of the lens of the course focused on epidemiological papers, we also applied the skills we learned to understanding social science and other fields of research, or data presentation more broadly.
I learned about how to better understand the language of statistics. I learned to identify accurate and inaccurate figures and graphs, different types of study designs, types of information. This course taught me to better understand everything from scientific papers to advertisements.
We learned how to analyze scientific claims in papers, the media, and more. We learned how to accurately look at figures and understand biases that may be present. We looked at misinformation, disinformation, and had many hands-on projects working on this. We also discussed statistics and methods of diagnostic testing.
statistics, how to interpret articles, types of studies
Generally speaking, I learned how to accurately read the scientific evidence we see all the time in the news and how to identify misinformation or faulty fata.
How to interpret graphs, basic stats, how to be speculative, thinking logically, cause vs association, and different types of scientific studies. Could also be called Scientific Media Literacy, I think
I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. Especially if someone is looking for a science requirement as a non-STEM major, and actually wants a course that will benefit them in the future. I've heard so many people complain about the science distributional requirement in general but this course is truly relevant and I'm so happy I chose it.