this student was supposed to write a short position piece on the benefits and/or drawbacks of animal protein in diet. they are quoting jordan peterson and say that even though producing meat is worse for the environment, the problem is overpopulation.
to be clear, i don't think this student is knowingly being malicious, but is obviously finding bad shit online. how would you approach this with the student? it's an online course so we've never met in person, but i have written about a thousand emails to the entire class since september, so they know who i am.
for context, i didn't design the course, just doing the grading.
Yeah i think critiquing their sources is the best way to go about it; showing them how to find properly academic sources and how to critically evaluate a source would be more helpful than a well deserved dunk. Taking the piss when they might already be agreeing with a hack like Peterson might just make them cling to it more and dive further in, but showing how to find proper research and letting them realise that nothing Peterson writes would show up is a better lesson.
One of my favourite profs loves to tell the story about how through shoddy research a college student wrote a paper denying the holocaust simply because the student searched for sources poorly; she talked to the kid after class and he was mortified to learn that he was literally using Nazi talking points where he thought he just followed research since a few of the blogs and books they cited were by supposed doctors or professors instead of using anything peer reviewed.