Needed in all science courses: teaching how science produces reliable knowledge as a community effort
An open-access resource to help meet this need: 2023 section of Essential Cell Biology textbook entitled Why Trust Science?
In 2024, a new version of Why Trust Science? was produced for a wider audience. Focusing on infectious disease instead of cell biology, it forms the basis for a new Why Trust Science? website, adding both Teaching Tools and Assessments to help teachers at all levels add this critical focus to their science courses.
The three authors of the website then published the following article: Hopkin, K., Roberts, K., Alberts, B. Teaching trust in science: a critical new focus for science education. Front. Commun., Volume 10 (2025).
Critical concepts from Why Trust Science?
- Science creates knowledge through a community effort
- Science Is self-correcting because scientists are critical of their own work
- Shared practices increase the accuracy of scientific findings
- Science Is a system for understanding the world that generates testable predictions
- Scientific thinking is continually refined by new evidence
- Most scientific knowledge builds gradually toward a reliable consensus
- Understanding the scientific process can help us differentiate between misinformation and legitimate science
- Ensuring that science remains trustworthy requires constant vigilance
- Trust in science is essential for our future as a civilization
Teaching about cells to 12-year olds
Middle school biology textbooks present cells as boring objects, with lists of indecipherable names of cell parts to be memorized. Can we challenge ourselves to produce a hands-on curriculum unit for 12-year olds that convinces them that a living cell is the most amazing thing we know of in the universe? With science education as now defined, most kids this age instead end up viewing the cell as a boring box full of meaningless parts — with names like the endoplasmic reticulum that they are forced to memorize.
See SERP’s attempt to teach differently.
Science Editorial: Skin Deep Biology
Graduate school teaching
- 2014 Classic Papers in Biology
Mini-course by Dr Alberts and Cynthia Kenyon at UCSF to teach standards of science.
Ongoing reforms in the teaching of introductory science teachings at the undergraduate level
Image of a collaborative classroom from the University of Arizona AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Project
Present-day scientists grew up in an era where lectures on science were the standard for college teaching, and much of school science focused on learning the “facts” that science had discovered about the natural world. 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 more directly address the standards and values of science for scientists in training.
Why science education is more important than most scientists think, Bruce’s 2022 publication in FEBS Letters can be found here.
- Science editorial: Redefining Science Education
- Reaching Students: What Research Says About Effective Instruction in Undergraduate Science and Engineering
Important resource for college science teachers explaining modern pedagogies by the Board on Science Education of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. - Science in the Classroom
Science magazine resource of annotated research papers and accompanying teaching materials.