As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had the privilege of speaking to a big group of K-12 science teachers recently. One of the many interesting conversations I had at that meeting was with Kelly Melendez-Loaiza, who teaches at Mansfield High School in the southeastern part of Massachusetts. She’s one of a few teachers who have decided to tackle our current misinformation pandemic head-on, by inoculating kids against the threat.

This is a lightly edited version of a keynote presentation I gave on 26 October 2022 at the Massachusetts Science Education Leadership Association meeting in Marlborough, MA. Thanks again to Liz Baker for inviting me, and the whole group for being such wonderful hosts. I really like the theme of this conference, “developing intelligent consumers of science.” I’m not normally a big fan of the term “consumers,” but in this case I think it makes sense.