Bruce Alberts

Bruce Alberts

Redefining Science Education, and Why Trust Science?

Needed in All Science Courses: Teaching How Science Produces Reliable Knowledge as a Community Effort

All science courses – at every level – should help students understand not just what we know, but how we know it. That means teaching the scientific process itself: how science builds reliable knowledge through a shared, self-correcting, evidence-based community effort.

To support this goal, a free, open-access resource was created:
The “Why Trust Science?” section of the 2023 edition of Essential Cell Biology

In 2024, the work was expanded for a broader audience. The new version shifts the focus from cell biology to infectious disease – and forms the heart of a new Why Trust Science? website at https://whytrustscience.org.uk. This website includes both Teaching Tools and Assessments to help educators bring these essential ideas into any science classroom.

Why Trust Science

This work is described in more detail in our recent article:
Hopkin, K., Roberts, K., & Alberts, B. (2025). Teaching trust in science: A critical new focus for science education. Frontiers in Communication, Volume 10. (https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2025.1589116)

Core Ideas from Why Trust Science?

  • Science is a community effort – it requires collaboration, transparency, and critique.
  • Science is self-correcting – scientists challenge their own work and revise ideas based on new evidence.
  • Shared standards and peer review make results more accurate and trustworthy.
  • Science generates testable predictions – it’s not just a body of facts but a process for understanding the world.
  • Scientific thinking evolves – theories improve as better evidence becomes available.
  • Consensus builds over time – most scientific knowledge emerges gradually through repeated testing and confirmation.
  • Knowing how science works helps us spot misinformation – and recognize legitimate science.
  • Science’s trustworthiness depends on vigilance – it requires integrity, openness, and continuous improvement.
  • Trust in science is not optional – it’s essential to solving the urgent challenges facing our world.

Rethinking How We Teach Science – From Middle School to Graduate School

Inspiring 12-Year-Olds: The Cell as a Living Marvel

Too often, middle school biology presents cells in dry, lifeless diagrams – with a large number of strange names like endoplasmic reticulum to be memorized and quickly forgotten.

But what if we flipped the script?

Can we design a hands-on, engaging curriculum that helps 12-year-olds recognize that a living cell is one of the most incredible, dynamic systems in the universe?

That’s an important challenge.

See how SERP is approaching the challenge:

FEBS Letters article cartoon

See Science magazine editorial on how we are failing our children by teaching them factoids

Rethinking Science Teaching in College and Beyond

Image of a collaborative classroom from UA AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Project
Image of a collaborative classroom from the
University of Arizona AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Project

Most of today’s scientists grew up with science lectures and memorization — where learning meant absorbing facts rather than exploring how those facts were discovered.

Extensive research in the past few decades has conclusively demonstrated that a more active form of science learning is much more effective in reaching most students. Changes in college science teaching must lead the way, if science education at all lower levels is to be redefined in effective ways. 

In addition, at the graduate school level, we need to directly address the standards and values of science for scientists in training.

As one example, here’s the syllabus from a graduate-level mini-course at UCSF, as co-taught by Bruce Alberts and Danica Fujimori in 2020. This course, begun as a collaboration between Bruce and Cynthia Kenyon in 2013, explores scientific standards and values by analyzing landmark papers.

 Classic Papers in Biology graduate-level mini-course syllabus

Why It All Matters

Redefining science education will be essential for cultivating a society that can think critically, evaluate evidence, and make informed decisions – as Bruce Alberts explains in his 2022 article in FEBS Letters:
Why Science Education Is More Important Than Most Scientists Think

Resources for Teachers and Educators

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