The Impact of Interventions Against Science Disinformation in High School Students

This work studies the effectiveness of three educational interventions (Civic Online Reasoning (COR), Cognitive Biases (CB), and Inoculation (INOC)) in helping high school students identify science disinformation. We conducted the experiments in classrooms in Northern Italy, the study employed an ecological design with real-world stimuli and a digital cellphone-based platform, engaging 2,288 students. Participants evaluated Instagram posts containing scientific and pseudoscientific content before and after the interventions. While previous research shows the efficacy of these techniques in controlled environments, this study found no significant improvement in students’ ability to discern accurate information. However, COR indirectly enhanced accuracy by promoting lateral reading and click restraint, albeit among a small subset. Conversely, the INOC approach increased generalised skepticism, leading to reduced trust in scientifically valid content. We observe that unlike in non-ecological environments, the classroom environment poses challenges, including distractions and varied engagement, highlighting the difficulty of scaling interventions from controlled to real-world settings. Despite these results, the study underscores the importance of refining educational strategies and adapting them to dynamic, real-world contexts to enhance digital literacy.