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Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Tools
  
 
One can find the following listed at any number of websites, and of course, in the book, The Demon-Haunted World, in which Carl Sagan, the famous (late) science popularizer, put his baloney detection tools in the form listed below.

In fact, the nine elements listed constitute one version of the scientific method.   As you can see, they are basically just common sense — when those trying to figure out reality are NOT emotionally invested in the outcome, AND they realize that reality can only be discovered by observation and experiment.   If these conditions do not apply, they need a dispassionate method of getting at the truth.   Although human civilization has been in existence for about ten thousand years, the scientific method has only been around for about four hundred years.

If you look at the nine steps, you will see that they entail, when done in detail, a fair amount of work.   It’s far easier to skip all this work.   Which is, of course, the problem with non-scientific ways of getting at the truth.   You need only look at the references to see how widely these tools can be used.

 
  1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts.   If you cannot agree on the facts, you will likely disagree on everything else.  
  2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.  
  3. Arguments from authority carry little weight — authorities have made mistakes in the past.   They will do so again in the future.   Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.  
  4. Spin more than one hypothesis.   If there is something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained.   Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives.   What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among multiple working hypotheses, has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.  
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  5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it is yours.   It is only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge.   Ask yourself why you like the idea.   Compare it fairly with the alternatives.   See if you can find reasons for rejecting it.   If you don’t, others will.  
  6. Quantify.   If whatever it is you are explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you will be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses.   What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations.   Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.  
  7. If there is a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.  
  8. Occam’s Razor.   This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us, when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well, to choose the simpler.  
  9. Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified.   Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much.   Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos.   But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof?   You must be able to check assertions out.   Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.

  
 
References
  
 
Forbes Article
Introduction to Library Research
Lie-Proof Your Life Using Carl Sagan's Baloney Detector

NASA briefing on avoidng fakery
RADCAB — An Information Evaluation Tool
Carl Sagan — Wikipedia
Science Fiction and Society Class Assignment

SMU Physics Dept
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
UCAR (University Center for Atmospheric Research)
UserFocus Article 		 
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