Baloney Detector

Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit or “Tools for skeptical thinking.”

What skeptical thinking bolls down to is the means to construct, and to understand, a reasoned argument and -especially important- to recognize a fallacious or fraudulent argument. The question is not whether we like the conclusion that emerges out of a train of reasoning, but whether the conclusion follows from the premise or starting point and whether that premise is true.