Carl Sagan’s “Baloney Detection Kit”

Carl Sagan, one of the great scientist-communicators to the general public of the past century, author of the 1980 book Cosmos and host of the 1980 TV series of that name, has a list of ideas for how to evaluate any kind of claim, a “Baloney Detection Kit”, described many times and recently posted again here: 9 questions Carl Sagan encourages you to ask before believing anything anyone has to say.

Briefly:

  1. Independently confirm ‘facts’
  2. Encourage debate
  3. There are no authorities, but there are experts
  4. Spin more than one hypothesis
  5. Don’t become attached to a hypothesis because it’s yours
  6. Quantify
  7. Examine every link in a chain of arguments
  8. Occam’s Razor
  9. Always consider if a given hypothesis can be falsified; beware if not
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