Shaw-IAU Workshops by the OAE

Students, like all citizens, are inundated with all sort of news by the media and social networks. That news turns out sometimes to be completely false and it's not easy to make the difference between a trustworthy information and a fake news. In France, probably as in many other countries, raising students' - and teachers'! - awareness of critical thinking as become a priority. We shall discuss and illustrate with a few examples how astronomy can be advantageously used to train the three pillars of critical thinking: the scientific methods, including history of science and epistemology, media and information literacy, and the knowledge of the main cognitive biases.

About Frédéric Pitout

I obtained a dual PhD degree in Space Plasma Physics at Uppsala University in Sweden and in Astrophysics at Toulouse University in France. I worked at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands and at the Max-Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics in Germany. I now hold an assistant astronomer position at Midi-Pyrénées Observatory in Toulouse where I conduct my research on star-planet connections and planetary magnetospheres. I also work part-time at the research institute for science education in the working group called "Science, media and critical thinking". Last, I'm the president of the Liaison comity between teachers and astronomers (CLEA) and one of the NAEC France.

Watch a recording of this talk (external link)