Michael Shermer: Baloney Detection Kit

The first video from RDF TV!

With a sea of information coming at us from all directions, how do we sift out the misinformation and bogus claims, and get to the truth? Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine lays out a "Baloney Detection Kit," ten questions we should ask when encountering a claim.

The 10 Questions:
1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
2.Does the source make similar claims?
3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
4. Does this fit with the way the world works?
5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
8. Is the claimant providing positive evidence?
9. Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

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[cayetanoluis2]

Yay for science!

[photopicker]

@officernarc Thanks. I am an embedded systems engineer with over 30 years experience and I have a pretty good handle on the scientific process. What isn't clear is why experience which due to the ontological gap and random nature is dismissed because A) it isn't rational to the known, and b) it can't be reproduced. Even worse some people will dismiss an entire culture of information based on observations from a specific portion of that culture as if the segment alone is cause to dismiss all.

[micasaverde]

I'm a skeptic, but I'm keeping an open mind to the fact that perhaps science has not yet discovered ALL the ways to measure things. Isn't everything evolving, including science itself?

[officernarc]

@photopicker i hate to tell you, man, but that IS science. people seem to have this weird concept of what science is. it's just a method. nothing more, nothing less. science isn't all large hadron colliders and launching telescopes into space. it's turning rocks over to see what's underneath and lighting things on fire just to see what happens when they burn. just think: science didn't begin with electron microscopes. it began with just looking at things.

[photopicker]

@officernarc Science is not the only way we have of interpreting our universe it is a practice of deep study of the universe with extended measurement tools beyond the human senses. Mankind has been interpreting the universe for quite some time and truths have surfaced without scientific means any more sophisticated than turning a rock over. Noting the seasons. Sailing beyond the horizon. Discovering oil. We have nothing more than our ability to reverse engineer our existence.

[gabbergandalf667]

@allthingsarelikethis

That's a whole different story - I won't deny that many scientists may fear researching fringe areas of their subjects due to fear of not getting funded. What I was countering was the myth that scientists usually only have their personal gain in mind, which is, when looking at wages of scientists in academia, and the life standards of junior scientists, a ridiculous claim. ;)

[Melkhor91230]

methan is one of the most important cause of destruction of the ozon....the most powerfull productors of this gas are....COWS.....yes....could you proof that is a false??.....loool....what a big science journalist you are.....ahhaahhahaahhaaha.....­the annual production of those animals al over the world kill much more the ozon than the CO2 or others gas....think poeple and analyze informations differently....

[ionz75]

This guy is coming to speak at my puny college this month, so excited!

[allthingsarelikethis]

@gabbergandalf667 Yes but in order to be recognized and granted these scientists must put things into the already established reality otherwise they don't get funded. Science just like any system has its politics and you either play by the rules or if you are a great scientist you push through and don't get recognized in your own life time but later when the culture catches up with your idea, which has happened a lot in the history of science.

[allthingsarelikethis]

@officernarc I am in no way saying that we should not use science to understand and navigate the physical nature of things. What I am saying is that we have become blase to just how crazy the things that science creates are and science is magic in every way if looked at from an outside modern times perspective. Science fails its awareness check in philosophy not in its mathmatics, by thinking that the things created by imagination are more real than the imagination itself.