Statistics education in a post-truth era

Post-truth refers to a climate where emotional reactions and personal beliefs are used more in shaping opinion and forming the basis for political action than is empirical evidence. Contempt for evidence is socially corrosive. It violates the core values of the statistical community, and poses an existential threat to the idea of evidence-informed decision making. The task of developing resistance to post-truth should be shared amongst everyone involved in statistics education. Here, we explore some possible responses as a community; we need to promote a non- partisan approach to promoting respect for high-quality evidence, and reasoning from evidence. We also need to look hard at our implicit acceptance of an ‘evidence-informed’ world view – when does the statistical and scientific community claim too much? After some scene setting (a brief introduction to the problem, and ideas on solutions from groups such as fact-checkers, social media platform providers, and journalists), we explore ways in which introductory statistics courses could be adapted to incorporate ‘anti-post-truth’ activities, then conclude with some ideas about how statistics educators can contribute to efforts from the broader community that depends on statistical literacy, and that is threatened by post-truth.