In an era of increasing dis- and misinformation, particularly in relation to social and natural crises like climate change, it is vital that geography students can decipher legitimate, high-quality scientific data from falsehoods to solve relevant problems. In students’ education, geography teachers have a central role. We conducted an empirical study on German university geography education Bachelor students to better understand their scientific data awareness – their general understanding of what scientific data are, where they come from, and how to discern data quality – to determine how best we can support them in gaining (and ultimately teaching) skills to critically evaluate data. In their responses to an online survey, participants recognized their data usage within scientific and academic settings, but their perception of scientific geographic data in their daily lives was limited. Many respondents also displayed an inability to clearly articulate exactly how they would evaluate and verify data presented to them. Some individuals also indicated a strong inherent trust in scientific data – associating scientific data with “truth” and “fact”. We provide recommendations on how to teach geography students to use scientific data and enhance scientific data awareness, but ultimately demonstrate a need for further studies. This work can benefit the creation of new educational modules that can teach students 1) that scientific geographical data are everywhere in our daily lives and 2) how they can critically determine data quality and analyze data found online and through generative artificial intelligence.