Melanie Trecek-King A science educator, speaker, and writer who focuses on critical thinking, science literacy, and misinformation. He is the creator of Thinking Is Power, Associate Professor of Biology at Massachusetts Community College, Education Director of the Mental Immunity Project, and a Fellow of the Committee on Skeptical Inquiry. His forthcoming book, A Field Guide to Spotting Misinformation, expands his public-education work by helping readers more effectively navigate lies in today’s crowded digital information environment.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen Melanie Tresek-King was interviewed about why she wrote A Field Guide to Spotting Misinformation and how years of teaching science to non-majors reshaped her mission. Tresek-King argues that people need evaluative skills to navigate lies online, not just more information. Using examples such as creationism, Ed Graves, and Leon Festinger’s Seekers, he explains how identity, cognitive dissonance, and motivated reasoning perpetuate pseudoscience and science denial among many audiences in modern public life.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I’ll ask the cliche question: Why did you write the book?
Melanie Trecek-King: I wrote the book I wanted to read. I wrote this to help understand the information environment. Do you want longer answers? It’s more interesting.
Jacobsen: of course
Trace-King: I have spent the past few decades teaching in college science classrooms. I’m a biologist, and I specialize in teaching non-majors, students who don’t plan to become scientists but need to take science courses.
I have tried many ways to make the material useful and engaging. It was frustrating that I couldn’t take care of them. I remember standing in front of the class teaching the cell cycle and cancer, explaining how cancer disrupts the cell cycle, and they were overwhelmed.
I realized that many of them would memorize material, reproduce it in tests, and then forget it, perhaps leaving with the same or greater dislike of science. More importantly, I realized that my students already had access to a huge amount of information through their phones. If they need to know about prophase or proto-oncogenes, they can look them up instantly.
However, they were one click away from misinformation about cancer. What they needed was no longer information; They need the ability to understand and evaluate the information available to them.
That realization changed my teaching and ultimately led to the book. I wanted to help students understand what they were seeing and why, distinguish between reliable and unreliable information, misinformation, and find reliable sources when necessary.
Often, people use search engines to feed their confirmation bias, which leads them to information that reinforces what they already believe. If the goal is to find reliable information, you need to understand how the information works and how your own beliefs shape your interpretation.
I also recognized the importance of incorporating misinformation into teaching. Teachers often skip this and focus only on the correct information. However, misinformation can be a powerful tool for learning how to evaluate evidence. If students are not exposed to false or misleading claims in a structured environment, they may struggle to recognize them elsewhere.
Incorporating this approach makes the material more engaging and useful. I realized that these skills are essential not only for students, but for everyone to navigate the modern information environment. That’s why I wrote the book.
Jacobsen: What is one main story in the book where pseudoscience comes together and creates significant negative effects?
Trace-King: In the book, I define pseudoscience and science denial as opposite sides of the same coin. Pseudoscience is the belief in something unsupported or unscientific, while science denial is the rejection of well-supported scientific evidence. They often occur together.
For example, I grew up as a young earth creationist. That is pseudoscience; It lacks evidence and its main claims are not false At the same time I was denying science. Evolutionary theory is one of the most unifying frameworks in biology; It explains patterns across all life sciences. To reject it, I had to replace it with creationism. The two reinforced each other.
Many examples in the book follow this pattern. At their core, these beliefs often reflect what we want or don’t want to believe. People take up pseudoscience because they want something to be true, a miraculous cure, or to communicate with a dead loved one. Conversely, people deny science because they don’t want certain conclusions to be true.
Avoiding both requires self-awareness. It means understanding our motivation. Some of the most dangerous cases, such as the Ed Graves story, involve identity-defining beliefs. They are tied to who we are, our community and our sense of meaning. Rejecting them can feel like losing a part of yourself.
In my case, moving away from creationism meant distancing myself from a community whose values I no longer accepted, including misogyny. Realizing I was wrong was liberating, but that meant losing those connections. This is a significant obstacle for many people.
If I want readers to engage deeply with these ideas, at the level of identity, emotion, and worldview, I cannot directly confront their core beliefs. This will trigger defensiveness and shift the focus to the decision rather than the process. Instead, I use examples that are historical, humorous, or culturally distant, that individuals cannot hold personally. This allows them to practice critical thinking skills without being defensive. I hope they then apply those skills to their own beliefs.
Jacobsen: Many specific examples illustrate that pseudoscience and science denial are separate yet overlapping phenomena that often reinforce each other. What motivates people to reject well-established scientific ideas or persist in pseudoscientific beliefs? There may not be a single answer, but there are probably general principles people can follow.
Trace-King: One of my favorite stories in the book is that it speaks directly and is much less heavy-handed than the Ed Graves example. Are you familiar with the work of Leon Festinger?
In the early 1950s, there was a woman named Dorothy Martin, a housewife who believed she was psychic. He practiced automatic writing, claiming that he wrote to receive messages. He initially believed he was communicating with his dead father and later with other entities. Finally, he claimed to receive messages from “Sananda”, whom he identified as an extraterrestrial being from the planet Clarion and equated with Jesus.
Sananda instructed him to gather a group of followers, known as seekers, to receive and share these prophecies. According to the message, Earth will soon be destroyed by a catastrophic event such as a flood or an earthquake, but the aliens will rescue the Seekers in a flying saucer.
The story attracted media attention. Leon Festinger, a social psychologist, became interested in what happens when predictions fail. He and his colleagues infiltrated the group to observe their behavior over time.
The team prepared for the rescue, following specific instructions, such as removing metal objects they believed could interfere with the spacecraft. As the predicted date approached, members made significant sacrifices, including quitting jobs and distancing themselves from family, and fully committing to the belief that the world would end.
There were false alarms, including a prank phone call from someone claiming to be “Captain Video”, a reference to a contemporary television character, which the group did not recognize as a hoax. They wait for rescue, coordinating interpretations when predictions fail.
On December 21, the predicted date of the demolition, the group gathered in anticipation of validation. When nothing happened, the mood changed from excitement to confusion, then to disgust. Members were deeply invested in trust and faced the possibility of error.
A few hours later, Martin reported receiving a new message: their faith and dedication saved the world from destruction. This reinterpretation allows the group to maintain their beliefs despite the failed prediction.
This case became a seminal example of cognitive dissonance, the process by which individuals reconcile conflicting beliefs and evidence, often reinterpreting reality to preserve their existing worldview.
Here’s the key point. People don’t change their minds, especially when there are clear costs to maintaining a belief. Leon Festinger developed the cognitive dissonance theory that discomfort occurs when reality conflicts with what we believe or how we act.
In this case, the team resolved that tension through objective reasoning. They used their reasoning powers to justify their beliefs, creating explanations that allowed them to be “right.” The strength of their commitment is important. They invested their reputation, relationships and wealth. They can’t be wrong. One follower, a college professor, reportedly expressed that he had sacrificed too much to admit wrongdoing.
Jacobsen: In journalism, I’ve noticed that you rarely convince anyone immediately. Instead, you engage them in conversation. They reflect later, and their views change over time, sometimes significantly, but often incrementally. It’s hardly instantaneous.
Trace-King: It’s hardly instantaneous. This story illustrates several important lessons. The more invested someone is in a belief, the harder it is for them to change their mind. The higher the personal stakes, the harder it is to admit a mistake.
It also has implications for how we relate to others. Getting it wrong in public is difficult and often humiliating. People need space to revise their opinions. Instead of mocking them, we should allow their dignity to change their minds.
Another lesson is that persuasion is not primarily about events. In science education, we often assume that disagreement is due to a lack of information, so we provide more information. However, as a former Young Earther, I know that information alone won’t change my mind. My beliefs were not based on evidence, even though I thought they were.
They were rooted in identity, emotions and social belonging. When people believe lies, simply presenting facts is often ineffective because the subject is not factual; It’s the underlying motivation. If we want to help people revise their views, we must look at those deeper reasons rather than just focusing on surface-level arguments.
Jacobsen: Thank you so much for the opportunity and your time, Melanie.
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen A writer-editor for Good Men Project With over 1,800 publications on the platform. He is its founder and publisher In-Site Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343; 978-1-0673505) and its editor-in-chief In-Site: Interview (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332-9416), humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018-7399; Online: ISSN, 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK registered charity 1177066), Humanist perspective (ISSN: 1719-6337), A further investigation (substack), vocal, moderate, New lighting project, Washington Outsider, rabble.caand other media. His bibliography can be found through the index Jacobsen Bank In-Site Publishing has more than 10,000 articles, interviews and republications in more than 200 outlets. He has held national and international leadership roles within humanitarian and media organizations, held several academic fellowships, and currently serves on several boards. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations including Canadian Journalists Association, Penn Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), and Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20-0708028), and others.
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