#criticalthoughtskepticism

Top 10 Common Faults In Human Thought From the site Listverse.com: "The human mind is a wonderful thing. Cognition, the act or process of thinking, enables us to process vast amounts of information quickly. For example, every time your eyes are open, you brain is constantly being bombarded with stimuli. You may be consciously thinking about one

Speaking of Science: Steven Novella In response to someone espousing an anti-science viewpoint: What do you think science is? There's nothing magical about science.  It is simply a systematic way for carefully and thoroughly observing nature and using consistent logic to evaluate results.  Which part of that exactly do you disagree with?  Do

The Logical Fallacies Collection: Or 30 ways to lose an argument Looking for a way to lose your next argument?  Use one of the logical fallacies listed below.  From Ad Hominems and Anecdotes to the Straw Man and Tu Quoque, you'll find a description and example for 30 logical fallacies. Simply defined, a logical fallacy is an error of reasoning

How To Get Involved With Skepticism I've often wondered how I can promote science and critical thought, while advancing skepticism. This blog is a result of that question:  I wanted to "show off" the beauty of the natural world, without having to invoke the paranormal or mysticysm or any pseudoscience. A blog is only one of the ways to accompli

How cognitive fallacies fool scientists (and how to fix the problem) Humans are remarkably good at self-deception, and growing concern about reproducibility is driving many researchers to seek ways to fight their own instincts.  Scientists are susceptible to the same cognitive fallacies as everyone else - so how can they mitigate the risk? The

Why do people believe in the paranormal, pseudoscience, and other weird things? The short answer, is that people want to believe. According to Brian Cronk, a professor of psychology at Missouri Western State University, "The human brain is always trying to determine why things happen, and when the reason is not clear, we tend to make up some prett

7H15 M3554G3 53RV35 7O PR0V3 H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5! This is not just another viral Facebook post (though we wouldn't mind if you all shared this to make it one).  Your ability to read this message reveals something fascinating about the human mind.  The message below - written as scrambled letters - suggests that only "strong mind

Scientific Evidence: A Rough Guide Our friends at Compound Interest (a fantastic website and a useful resource for science educators and communicators) created a very handy infographic to provide people with A Rough Guide to the Types of Scientific Evidence.  Being able to evaluate evidence behind a claim is important, but scientific evidence com