Twelve key concepts were emphasized:

Claims

Treatments might be harmful
Personal experiences or anecdotes (stories) are an unreliable basis for assessing the effects of most treatments
Widely used treatments or treatments that have been used for a long time are not necessarily beneficial or safe
New, brand-named, or more expensive treatments may not be better than available alternatives
Opinions of experts or authorities do not alone provide a reliable basis for deciding on the benefits and harms of treatments
Conflicting interests may result in misleading claims about the effects of treatments
Comparisons

Evaluating the effects of treatments requires appropriate comparisons
Apart from the treatments being compared, the comparison groups need to be similar (ie, “like needs to be compared with like”)
If possible, people should not know which of the treatments being compared they are receiving
Small studies in which few outcome events occur are usually not informative and the results may be misleading
The results of single comparisons of treatments can be misleading
Choices

Treatments usually have beneficial and harmful effects
These are indeed key concepts that any medical skeptic needs to know and understand. I’ve empnasized pretty much all of them at one time or another over the last 12 years. Heck, we even have names for some of them, such as the appeal to antiquity to describe the concept that just because a treatment is old does not make it better. After all, many of these “ancient” remedies date back to times when medicine was anything but scientific and the very basics of what causes disease were not understood and instead diseases were attributed to “imbalances” in humors, “bad air,” or even the intervention of malign spirits. Any of them that might work were basically discovered by sheer accident, and ancient herbal remedies that work have mostly already been picked over and turned into purified drugs.

The result was a publication in The Lancet. At the end, results from students at non-curriculum schools were compared with those of students at Informed Health Choices schools on a 24-question multiple choice test on the 12 concepts (two questions per concept). The results were striking:

The average score for children in the intervention schools was 62·4% (SD 18·8) compared with 43·1% (15·2) in the control schools. The adjusted mean difference (based on the regression analysis) was 20·0% (95% CI 17·3–22·7; p<0·00001) higher in the intervention than in the control group. Appendix 1 shows the distribution of test scores. In the intervention schools, 3967 (69%) of 5753 children had a passing score (≥13 of 24 correct answers), compared with 1186 (27%) of 4430 in the control schools (table 2). The adjusted difference (based on the odds ratio from the logistic regression analysis) was 50% more children who passed (95% CI 44–55; p<0·00001) in the intervention than in the control group.

Noting:

Use of the Informed Health Choices primary school resources had a large effect on the ability of primary school children in Uganda to assess claims about treatment effects. This effect was larger for children with better reading skills, but the intervention was effective for children lacking basic reading skills, as well as for children with basic or advanced reading skills. This effect was achieved even though the learning materials and the tests were in English, which was not the children’s first language. Based on findings from pilot testing both the resources and the test used to measure the outcomes, we were surprised by the size of the effect, which is also large in comparison to other education interventions in primary schools in low-income and middle-income countries,20 and other interventions to teach critical thinking for all ages in high-income countries.11 In addition, the intervention had a positive effect on the children’s intended behaviours and the teachers’ mastery of the key concepts.

Overall, about one-fifth of the children achieved a test score indicating that they had mastered the key concepts (getting at least 20 questions out of the 24 correct), while less than 1% of the children in control schools achieved that high a score. This is quite an effect.

The authors do acknowledge weaknesses in their study. One thing I tend to question is whether the questions on the multiple choice test actually correspond to what the authors say they do. In other words, we don’t know if the children learned how to answer test questions but at the end of the teaching didn’t know how to apply the concepts they learned to real life. We also have no way of knowing what the long term effects of these interventions are and whether they will actually have measurable effects on the health choices made by these participants when they are adults. I also hate to be the pessimist, but I find it disappointing that, even after this intervention, only one-fifth of the children mastered all of the concepts and the average score among those who underwent the teaching still got more than 1/3 of the questions wrong.

As much as there is an emphasis on starting to learn critical thinking at a young age, all is not lost for us old farts:

I should have thought your ideological fellow travellers have done enough damage to the last two generations without embarking on a new Crusade to impose your wisdom.

polite_gandalf wrote on May 25^th, 2017 at 12:55pm:



With respect, i must heartily disagree. I think critical thinking is not only successfully taught but innate in many of us.

Where else do we get our rebels; our iconoclasts from?

Speaking for myself, at a very young age i rejected the ideas and many of the values i was raised with. My first clue was the charity drive for Christmas. By 9 i was a vegetarian.

I am naturally apprehensive over what i am told. I am inclined to fact check. It is innate.

I have raised my children to question everything, even me and their father. We often play devil's advocate to encourage our kids to sharpen their claws. Whether or not their proficiency at critical thinking is nature or nurture, we will never know. It is enough that they are both adept at it.

... wrote on May 25^th, 2017 at 2:06pm:



Incorrect. But you often are.

critical thinking should be done by an individual as they reflect on the 1000's of reference experiences they have gained by interacting in the "real world'.

as men, we go out and (should) take massive action.
try this, try that, fail, take the lesson, course correct and carry on.

part of this course correction is to 'reflect" on and "think" about what we find to be true and untrue in the real social dynamic.

when you do this, you see how people who are stuck in group think are literally being cheered off the cliff.

you also see how people will use social pressure on each other to try to outframe someone elses position.

But i would counsel against teaching children to think too much.they will likely get stuck in their heads and stifled.
action is the path to success for a young dude.

mothra wrote on May 25^th, 2017 at 1:14pm:



You are confusing your being refractory from a young age with being a critical thinker which you most certainly are not. You are a champion of group think and mental conformity.

mothra wrote on May 25^th, 2017 at 6:47pm:




Sure you are.

Thinking is driven by underlying values, morals or interests. These are hidden to most, but the sharper mind knows when their values are driving their thinking.