CARL SAGAN'S BALONEY DETECTION KIT
Based on the book The
Demon
Haunted World by Carl Sagan
2 Oct 11: Carl Sagan's books, including this one, are now
available as ebooks from Kindle
- but only for residents of the USA :(
The following are suggested as tools for testing arguments and
detecting
fallacious or fraudulent arguments:
- Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of
the
facts
- Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by
knowledgeable
proponents
of all points of view.
- Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science
there
are no
"authorities").
- Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the
first
idea
that
caught your fancy.
- Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because
it's yours.
- Quantify, wherever possible.
- If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must
work.
- "Occam's razor" - if there are two hypothesis that explain
the
data
equally
well choose the simpler.
- Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be
falsified
(shown
to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, is
isttestable?
Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result?
Additional issues are
- Conduct control experiments - especially "double blind"
experiments
where
the person taking measurements is not aware of the test and
control
subjects.
- Check for confounding factors - separate the variables.
Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric
- Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the
argument.
- Argument from "authority".
- Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the
decision
maker
by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavourable"
decision).
- Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence).
- Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).
- Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the
question is
phrased).
- Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting
the
misses).
- Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions
from
inadequate
sample sizes).
- Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President
Eisenhower
expressing
astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all
Americans
have below average intelligence!)
- Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst
case
scenarios
but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily
ignored
because
they are not "proved").
- Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic
falls
down.
- Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so
it
was
caused
by" - confusion of cause and effect.
- Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible
force
meets an
immovable object?).
- Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a
range
of
possibilities
(making the "other side" look worse than it really is).
- Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why
pursue
fundamental
science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").
- Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted
extrapolation
of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).
- Confusion of correlation and causation.
- Straw man - caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to
make
it easier
to attack..
- Suppressed evidence or half-truths.
- Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such
as
"police
action"
to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An
important art
of politicians is to find new names for institutions which
under old
names
have become odious to the public"
Above all - read the book!
Further resources:
- The Critical
Thinking
Community
- CSICOP/Skeptical Inquirer
- Australian Skeptics
- Quackwatch
- The Annals of Improbable
Research - with the Ignobel Awards and
the AIR
Teachers Guide.
- Carl Sagan
Productions
Ann Druyan's
comment on this web page:
"I have no problems whatsoever with your efforts to spread the
word
on critical thinking. It was Carl's dream and mine that
each and
everyone of us would have that baloney detection kit inside
our
heads.
I salute your efforts in this direction.
With best wishes,
Ann Druyan"
- 12 Nov 2000 Project
Voyager: OneCosmos
represents
the realization of a shared lifelong hope to organize and
lead a team
that
will deliver the vision of Cosmos through every available
screen:
spectacular
living Internet, engaging television and cinematic works of
art.
- Examining
the
role of think tanks by Sharon
Beder, Engineers Australia, November 1999.
- Innumeracy.com.
- Faith-Based
Reasoning - Scientific American June 2001. In one
case [global
warming],
the president invokes uncertainty; in the other [missile
defence], he
ignores
it. In both, he has come down against the scientific
consensus.
- InConcept.
- Scientific American, Nov 01: Baloney
Detection:
How to draw boundaries between science and pseudoscience,
Part
I. Part
II.(updated URLs)
- Scientific American May 02: The
Exquisite
Balance - It seems to me what is called for is an
exquisite
balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical
scrutiny of
all
hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a
great
openness
to new ideas.... If you are only skeptical, then no new
ideas make it
through
to you.... On the other hand, if you are open to the point
of
gullibility
and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you
cannot
distinguish
the useful ideas from the worthless ones - Carl Sagan,
1987.
- Skeptic.com
- The Skeptic's Dictionary
by
Robert T. Carroll.
- Cable
Science Network - new TV service dedicated to science.
- 21 Feb 06 New Scientist: Algorithm
detects
Canadian politicians' spin - Spin, in this case, is defined as “text or
speech where the apparent meaning is not the true belief of
the person
saying or writing it”...
- 9 Mar 06 National Geographic: Was
Darwin Wrong?
- 11 May 05 Karl Kruszelnicki: Mysterious
Killer Chemical - We live under the illusion that we
understand the world around us...Dihydrogen Monoxide
FAQ - a common household compound can be hazardous
- 27 May 06 SciAm: Up
the Lazy Creek
- "motivational deficiency disorder"...numerous news outlets
picked up
the BMJ press release and ran it without a hint of skepticism.
That's
just motivationally deficient journalism. BMJ abstract: Scientists
find new disease: motivational deficiency disorder
+ People
are easily duped about new diseases, conference is told.
- 27 Jun 06: By coincidence, I received the 24 June copy of
New
Scientist and July copy of Scientific American on the same
day. In New
Scientist Richard Koch and Chris Smith ask "why
is science under attack like never before?". They
suggest that the rest of society is now much more
critical of science, which has revealed a darker side such as
atomic
weapons and "poisoning of the planet". There is another, more
likely
reason for the demise of science that is revealed in the
article "The
Political Brain"
by Michael Shermer in Scientific American. He describes MRI
studies of
the brain that have revealed how the brain suppresses the
rational,
reasoning portion of the brain in favour of emotions that
reinforce
confirmation bias - "whereby we seek and find confirmatory
evidence in
support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret
disconfirmatory evidence".
Science, of course, is built on that rational, reasoning
function of
the brain and is founded on skepticism. This does not bode
well for
politicians, religious fanatics or marketers of consumers
products who
utilise emotional responses to ply their trade. Is it any
wonder that
that science and skepticism are discriminated against when
these same
groups now have a huge influence on the media?
- 6 Oct 06 New Scientist (subs): Mind
fiction: Why your brain tells tall tales (see 27 June
item above)
- Ig
Nobel prizes for 2006!
- 9 May 07: Perpetual
Motion and the Big Wither.
- 25 Feb 08 New Scientist ($): Interview: The man who would prove all
studies wrong
- "People aren't willing to abandon their hypothesis. If you
spend 20
years on a specific line of thought and suddenly your
universe
collapses, it is very difficult to change jobs." + Comment: Why peer review thwarts innovation
- 25 Feb 08 SciAm: Adam's Maxim and Spinoza's Conjecture
- "...we should reward skepticism and disbelief and champion
those
willing to change their mind in the teeth of new evidence. "
- Jun 08 Kids.net.au: Scientific
method.
- 21 Feb 10 New Scientist: CERN
on trial: could a lawsuit shut the LHC down? - Social
scientists
have identified a number of phenomena that can skew attempts
to reach objective assessments of risk. For instance,
cognitive
dissonance describes the tendency of people to seek
information that is
consistent with their beliefs and to avoid information that
is
inconsistent. "Groupthink" describes a process by which
intelligent
individuals, working in a group, can reach a worry-free
outlook that is
not justified by the facts. And the phenomenon of
confirmation bias -
the tendency to filter information so as to confirm working
hypotheses
- was cited by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board as
one
explanation for why space shuttle programme managers ignored
sure signs
of trouble.
- 14 May 10 New Scientist: Special
Report - Living in Denial
- 4 Dec 10 SciAm: The
Conspiracy Theory Detector - How to tell the difference
between true and false conspiracy theories + Michael
Shermer’s video on Baloney Detection.
- 27 May 11: This page now copied at the official
Carl Sagan website - thank you
- 27 Aug 11 SciAm: What
Is Pseudoscience?
- 2 Oct 2011: Carl Sagan's books are now available from Kindle - but only for
residents of the USA :(
- 20 Dec 12 SciAm: The
Mind’s Compartments Create Conflicting Beliefs
- 25 Jun 13 SMH: Why
superfoods are not so super after all
- 9 Sep 14 Atheist
TV - provide a counter-balance to the myriad of
religious (and psuedo-science) programming available on
television.
- 11 Sep 14 American Atheists: AN
INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS ADAMS + Recovering From
Religion.
- 13 Jan 16 Lawers Weekly: Research
reveals the problem with ‘overwhelming evidence’
- A new study has suggested that total agreement between
witnesses or
overwhelming evidence in a court case should raise suspicions
of bias
and lower confidence in a result.
- 25 Jan 17 ScienceAlert: The
internet is freaking out over this spooky prediction by Carl
Sagan about the future.
- 23 May 17 SciAm: Revamped
"Anti-Science" Education Bills in U.S. Find Success.
- 22 Nov 17 Sapiens Hub: “In questions of science, the
authority
of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single
individual.”
― Galileo Galilei” Excerpt From Science:
A Collection Of Quotes
- 11 Mar 19 Scientific American March 2019: Why
we believe conspiracy theories
- has a useful section "Telling fact from fiction" that is
similar to
the above kit (copyright SA): ...ask three key questions when
interpreting conspiracy claims. One: What is your evidence?
Two: What
is your source for that evidence? Three: What is the reasoning
that
links your evidence back to the claim? Sources of evidence
need to be
accurate, credible and relevant...False conspiracy theories
have
several hallmarks,..First, the theories include
contradictions. For
example, some deniers of climate change argue that there is no
scientific consensus on the issue while framing themselves as
heroes
pushing back against established consensus. Both cannot be
true. A
second telltale sign is when a contention is based on shaky
assumptions. A third sign that a claim is a far-fetched
theory, rather
than an actual conspiracy, is that those who support it
interpret
evidence against their theory as evidence for it.
- 2 Aug 19 The Guardian: Revealed:
Johnson ally’s firm secretly ran Facebook propaganda network.
- "...campaigns in support of coal power, tobacco, and against
cyclists."
- 4 Sep 19 ScienceAlert: Unnerving
Chinese Deepfake App Lets You Replace Celebrity Faces With
Your Own - likely to be used for creating fake videos
to stir up trouble. Update: Japan Today: Facebook,
Microsoft launch contest to detect deepfake videos.
- 28 Oct 19 New Scientist: Deepfakes
are being used to dub adverts into different languages.
- 15 Nov 19 New Scientist: Deepfakes
are terrible for democracy, but Facebook is a bigger threat.
- 1 Apr 20 The Conversation: How
not to fall for coronavirus BS: avoid the 7 deadly sins of
thought.
- 29 Dec 20 The Conversation: 3
fallacies that blighted this year’s COVID commentary — have
you fallen foul of any of them?
- 15 Jan 24 BBC: TB
Joshua exposé: How the disgraced pastor faked his miracles.
Less serious sites:
- Journal of
Irreproducible
Results
- Dihydrogen Monoxide
FAQ
- a common household compound can be hazardous
Created by Michael
Paine in January 1998.