The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services produced a bunch of great videos to explain topics related to human subject research . The videos were created as part of a broader outreach effort intent on  explaining the research process to research participants .  I think they would fit right into a Research Methods course. Topics include: IRBs: Research design: There is also a specific video explaining social science research: All of the videos (along with handouts) are available here . All videos have closed-captions as well as Spanish versions

As described here, legislatures in Puerto Rico attempted to take independent authority away from the Puetero Rican Institute of Statistics (PRIS), a governmental watch dog in charge of double checking statistics and research methods used by the government . This decision was made in order to streamline government, which is understandable. But it was also problematic because watchdogs need independence in order to have the power and safety to say unpopular things. Anyway, the legislatures ended up NOT streamlining PRIS's and taking away its authority, in part due to an outcry from other scientific agencies. How to use in class: -Statistics in real life, informing decisions, informing funding, being controversial. -Why do organizations like American Statistical Association and American Association for the Advancement of Science exist? Well, for a lot of reasons, one of which is t o publicly protests moves like the one PR tried to execute. -Statisticians and scientists aren...

This report from Pew  highlights the differences in opinions between the average American versus members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). For various topics, this graph reports the percentage of average Americans or AAAS members that endorse each science related issues as well as the gap between the two groups. Below, the yellow dots indicate the percentage of scientists that have a positive view of the issue and the blue indicate the same data for an average American. If you click on any given issue, you see more detailed information on the data. In addition to the interactive data, this report by Funk and Rainie summarizes the main findings. You can also access the original report of this data  (which contains additional information about public perception of the sciences and scientists). This could be a good tool for a research methods/statistics class in order to convince students that learning about the rigors of the scientif...