Critical appraisal: The key to unlocking information literacy in the STEM disciplines

Abstract

Science is an essential social institution and a building block in advancing human societies. At the core of scientific discovery and problem solving is innovation to improve the human condition, within and beyond the institutions of higher education that shape scientific minds. Research in any field, beginning in undergraduate education, is fundamentally about information—finding, understanding, generating, discussing, influencing, contradicting, contextualizing, disproving, and communicating it; the ability to do so generally referred to as information literacy. Parallel to this, everyday life increasingly requires navigating an overwhelming amount of complex scientific information, and misinformation.