Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems that disinformation has increased tremendously. Seeing the lies and conspiracy theories about masks and vaccines made me realize how important it is for people to receive proper science education. However, I’ve been unable to articulate what that would actually look like in practice. Until I came across this piece.

What we don’t teach is how science functions as a social institution that allows tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals to work together collectively to undercover the workings of the physical universe. Everything we teach about the process of science involves that which one can do alone at night in an empty laboratory.

This gets at the core problem of how schools currently teach science and how to fix it. We teach young people how to do experiments, but we don’t teach them what that looks like when scaled up to the level of global cooperation. And if people don’t understand that, they’re more vulnerable to disinformation about it.

We need to teach people why science deserves their trust – and this requires teaching how science works as a social institution.

Now we just need to reform the entire American education system to reflect this ideal. That can’t be too hard, right?