A thought-provoking piece, from a scientist-educator's point of view, about how to counter the LandoLakes * ("easy to spread") culture, intent on disseminating conspiracy theories and other disinformation through social media platforms embopress.org/doi/full/10.1...
Selected highlights:
Conspiracy theorists nowadays have free rein on social media to propagate untruths and distortions. And science is a frequent target, especially where experimentally verifiable data contradicts long-held beliefs or seems opposed to a deeply rooted ideology. But, even if science follows no ideology other than a fundamental commitment to truth, ensuring that truth prevails is an enormous task in which we frequently appear to be failing.
Much of the effort in informing at least the coming generation about the above issues and many others has to come through high schools, where students are still exposed to a wide portfolio of subjects, in contrast to the specializations of college and university studies.
We need to earn the respect of our audience, not just try to impress them with stuff they cannot follow or they do not care about. Otherwise, we are just behaving as the despised elite and reinforcing the prejudices we seek to counteract.
And it does not stop with teaching the “facts” of science. It must begin with something much more fundamental: the scientific method, how one goes about planning an experiment and analyzing the results, and the ways in which scientific findings are communicated, disseminated, challenged, and reconfirmed.
Teachers must be prepared not only to say how all the above is done or should be done, but also explain what mechanisms exist for identifying and preventing potential bias. How do we make sure that peer-review is not simply the elite validating its own prejudices?
Thus, we—and all the teachers who do the heavy lifting—need to explain not just the content of what we publish, but the universally applied criteria for validating our findings—controls, statistics, replication—and the mechanisms behind publication.
And I would go even further. If these practices that define how we conduct ourselves as professional scientists cannot be explained and justified to a class of inquisitive 15-year-olds, then they must be changed.
* Land o' Lakes: a brand of butter with added olive oil and salt
* Land o' Lakes: a settlement in west-central Florida **
** Florida, a state whose surgeon-general was reported to have made televised statements aligned with QAnon et al, concerning mRNA vaccines and face masks in the context of the Covid pandemic tampabay.com/news/florida-p...
So sick of COVID conspiracy theorists!!
Antibodies and vaccines 
