Tools for Thinking Critically & Knowing Pseudoscience When You See It

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Recommended for all researchers & students. (Some Bcc)

Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically & Knowing Pseudoscience When You See It

https://www.openculture.com/2025/09/the-carl-sagan-baloney-detection-kit.html

Carl Sagan's 9 points begin 3 minutes into the video, after a useful introduction.

The full title is:

Carl Sagan’s* Baloney** Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically & Knowing Pseudoscience When You See It

"This assembled metaphorical box of tools for diagnosing fraudulent arguments and constructing reasoned ones involves these nine (9) principles:

• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

• Arguments from authority carry little weight — “authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

• Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives.

• Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives.

• See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

• If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations.

• If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.

• Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified…. You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

As McCoy points out, these techniques of mind have to do with canceling out the manifold biases present in our thinking, those natural human tendencies that incline us to accept ideas that may or may not coincide with reality as it is. If we take no trouble to correct for these biases, Sagan came to believe, we’ll become easy marks for all the tricksters and charlatans who happen to come our way. And that’s just on the micro level: on the macro level, vulnerability to delusion can bring down entire civilizations."

*Wikipedia: Carl Sagan Carl Edward Sagan  November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator.

**Baloney is US slang for 'nonsense or foolish talk' -- based on a type of sausage (meat and other ingredients ground up and stuffed into a casing).  Traditionally Baloney is inexpensive, relative to other types of meat.

Deborah