YESTERDAY saw the inauguration of the 45th president of the United States of America – Donald Trump. He’s the Marmite president; you either love him or you hate him.

Setting aside all his obvious flaws, bad taste showmanship, bizarre use of Twitter to set US policy and pressurising companies/media outlets, I find him an intriguing man. This is why.

Some time ago I read a paper by two researchers, David Dunning and Justin Kruger of the department of psychology at Cornell University. In this paper they described people who had done what seemed like really stupid things – the sort of acts that end up on programmes like “Britain’s dumbest criminals”. They were fascinated by the case of man who robbed two banks and had covered his face in lemon juice to avoid being captured on CCTV – lemon juice can be used as “invisible ink”. Did he really think that by doing this he would become invisible? Apparently he did. The effect has been summed up, brutally, as “so stupid, you don’t even know how stupid you are”.

It’s not just about people doing daft things – people who illustrate this effect are incapable of recognising their limitations with respect to their own level of knowledge, understanding or skills. They also fail to recognise the problems and inadequacies of others. Outwardly such people are usually very confident, over confident perhaps. Such people self-assuredly claim to be smart or bright or well-educated. They refuse to accept they are wrong even when they are clearly shown to be wrong.

This set me thinking about Trump. Listen to his “answers” to questions and they are often rambling and incoherent. He refuses to accept he’s wrong, spreads misinformation and when fact checked, he is more often wrong than right. Trump claimed a “massive win” despite losing the popular vote by more than two million.

Trump is famously quoted as saying “I know words; I have the best words”. He claimed that president Obama was the founder of the so-called Islamic State terrorist group. “Isis is honouring President Obama. He is the founder of Isis. He founded Isis.” But was this just an outrageous slur against Obama or does he actually believe this? Recall he questioned Obama’s birth place and his right to be president for a long time and even disputed the evidence of Obama’s US birth certificate when it was presented and now claims he never questioned Obama’s birthplace.

We’ve been told we’re in an era of “post-truth” so what does this mean for teachers? How do we teach children to deal with what they see on social media – the lies and fake news?

The UK is not immune from post-truth, fake news – remember Brexit’s £350 million week for the NHS? Think how far we are from the various pledges on the single market made by the leave campaign and the “shift” in rhetoric as we start getting details of what leaving the EU actually entails.

Children need to be made aware of how easy it is for “fake news” to appear credible – they need to be taught the skills to track down information and the source of that information and how to assess the credibility of the various media to which they have access. Established newspapers with trained professional journalists strive to ensure their stories are as truthful and accurate as possible but even some long-established national media outlets are not immune to publishing, if not false, misleading information.

Online, Wikipedia is infamous for its inaccuracies and the ability of (almost) anyone to change information. Google is probably the first port of call for many (including me) wanting to know something. But I never accept at face value the information on a site I do not know well and trust. The thing to do is triangulate, that is, check the information across at least three separate sources and try to include trusted sites with a proven track record. Mainstream media eg the BBC, ITN, Guardian, Telegraph etc are trusted and should be unbiased but as with any media information, bias can never be fully ruled out which is why triangulation – getting information from multiple sources – also helps to reduce any possible bias.

A good example of how easy “fake” information takes hold is to check how many of these quotes, attributed and commonly known to have been said by Albert Einstein, are in fact his words.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

As you may have guessed, none of them were actually said by Einstein, but many people will swear otherwise.

James D Williams is lecturer in science education at Sussex School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sussex