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.
Other commenters have already posted this, but I'll echo them here. Quality of sources is the obvious place to approach the problem. Does your school/institution have library access to academic data bases? Point the student to those search functions, and encourage them to seek sources there. Many libraries will have explanatory videos showing how to navigate databases, so linking those would be good too. Maybe even talk to the professor about giving the student a low grade, but an opportunity to rewrite the paper using academic sources for a better grade after the fact. Let the student know that they can still argue the same point if they so choose, but it must come from reliable sources.