[CobaltBlue]

I think teaching bright high school kids about the peppered moth kerfluffle is an excellent introduction into critical thinking. Same with the "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" kerfluffle and some others which are listed.

Most of the kids aren't going to become scientists, so teaching them to be dubious of scientific claims, rather than credulous, is probably not a bad thing. Take, for example, the whole nuclear winter-global warming back-and-forth. Most people simply throw up their hands and cry "a plague on all your houses."

Learning that even extremely intelligent people with good intentions make mistakes, but learn from them, and keep going, is better than teaching them that scientists have all the answers already.

[js1138]

Global warming would be a good topic for teaching critical thinking. For one thing, the kids will live to see the outcomes of the predictions.