Restricted to students in the Departmental Honors program (Departmental BPO)

This course explores misinformation and its impact on science communication and public attitudes towards science. We will examine how misinformation spreads in our current media environment, how people form attitudes about science, why people believe misinformation and what it means to be misinformed , and the challenges of correcting misinformation especially for new or uncertain areas of science. We will draw on theory and current science examples such as vaccines, nuclear energy, artificial intelligence, and gene editing.