Good headline / bad headline – there is an opportunity here to discuss how scientific findings are translated (and mistranslated) in the popular press. Choose a recent science news item and have students find articles that report on that finding. Have them compare those articles with the original peer-reviewed presentation of those data. Which news articles most accurately represent the scientific finding? Which are misleading? Why?

Skepticism discussion – Dr. Block says that “a good scientist is a good skeptic for their own data set.” What does that mean? Does this mean we should be skeptical of everything? Why / why not? There is a push for some scientists to stop calling people who don’t think the climate is changing “climate skeptics” and to start calling them “climate deniers.” Why do you think this is?

Statistical analysis – this video is a good time to have students think about quantifying variability and error. Give students a set of data from any field and have them analyze it using basic descriptive statistics. Calculating means, standard deviations, variances, standard errors, and confidence intervals is a great way to have students begin to think about how we can go from a table of numbers to conclusions. You can also have students visualize these statistics.