1 Pseudoscience
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Inquiry-based Activity: Using pseudoscience in ads
Introduction: With the rise of social media and increased connectivity, it has become easy for people hawking pseudoscientific products to reach a lot of people. Some of these attempts are incredibly convincing and have wide followings (Goop, a company founded and run by Gwyneth Paltrow, is a good example of this kind of pseudoscience). While students will report understanding what pseudoscience looks like and be able to list aspects of pseudoscience, even well educated people find themselves duped at times. In this activity, students will take on the role of ad developer with the specific task of using pseudoscience to sell a product. Ideally, seeing how these types of ads are developed will give students a better understanding of how people are duped and how they can avoid these types of products in the future. A good example of an ad with several components of pseudoscience
Question to pose to students: Using principles of pseudoscience, can you develop a product ad that convinces people to buy the product, despite a lack of scientific evidence for its efficacy?
Note: Depending on what readings/textbook/other materials you are using with this activity, the specific principles your students have to choose from will differ. While many sources have some overlap in the things they use as core principles of pseudoscience (e.g., an appeal to authority), there is still some variation.
Students form a hypothesis: Individually, students will think of the pseudoscientific concepts that they believe will be most useful in selling a product that has not been scientifically tested. In pairs or small groups, they will then discuss/defend their choices and then collectively decide on three concepts that have the best chances of success.
Students test their hypotheses: In pairs or small groups, students will think of a product based in pseudoscience that they want to sell. If time is limited, you can also provide them with options, or have everyone develop ads for the same product. Using the previously selected pseudoscientific concepts, they will then develop an ad for their product. Depending on time/resources, students could write the script for the ad, use a print ad made in a program such as Canva or Powerpoint, or some other modality.
Do the students’ hypotheses hold up?: In smaller classes, each group can come to the front of the class and “present” their ads. Then, other students can vote on whether they would buy the product/whether the pseudoscience techniques were effective/etc. If the class is larger, have each group exchange their ads with three other groups and give feedback to each other.
