THE CRITICAL THINKING EFFECT

UNCOVER THE SECRETS OF THINKING CRITICALLY

AND TELLING FACT FROM FICTION

THINKNETIC
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 CONTENTS

Introduction

1. What It Means To Be A Critical Thinker In This Day And Age

2. What Keeps Us From Getting To The Truth?
3. Why Having A Scientifically Skeptical Mind Helps You Discover The
Truth
4. Why The Media Can Make Or Break Our Thinking
5. Everyday Lies And Deception
6. Pseudoscience Versus Science

Afterword
One Final Word From Us
Continuing Your Journey
References
Disclaimer
 INTRODUCTION

Have you ever wondered why there seems to be so much

misinformation out there? With fake news stories reaching a hundred
times more users on Twitter than real news stories, perhaps it is no
wonder we have a problem separating the facts from nonsense. That
leads us to another question: who comes up with the facts, and how
do they know what is real? Why do some people believe official or
scientific explanations, whereas others prefer to believe alternatives?
Is deception an unavoidable part of human existence? Can we
develop techniques to cope with this influx of potential deception and
get to the truth?
We all learned critical thinking at school and college, but how often
do we apply it in everyday life? Even more importantly, how often do
we interact with others who fail to apply a critical thinking approach
to their work and personal lives? Many people happily believe in
nonsensical ideas, whether these be innocent misconceptions or (in
some cases) dangerous misinformation. By developing your critical
thinking skills even further, you can learn to deal with these difficult
people and present a coherent case for why they should perhaps
research their views further.
A critical thinking mindset also helps us be more efficient and
effective at work, enabling us to focus on relevant information and
discard unconnected or inaccurate information. This leaves more
time for the things and people we enjoy. If you strive for balance, it is
worth taking the time to hone these skills and learn to apply them in
a broader range of situations.
Many of us are perfectionists, and there is nothing wrong with that.
We know that perfectionists deliver better results due to their high
standards, but why not streamline your perfectionism and do the
same or better with less effort? That is where the techniques in this
book come in.
This book walks you through the details of using critical thinking, to
identify the truth from non-truth. It contains specific examples,
illustrative stories, thorough explanations, and practice exercises; all
backed up by a range of scientific studies conducted by experts in
their fields.
Each chapter is self-contained and logically organized, meaning you
do not have to read it all in one sitting to make sense of the contents.
You will understand how to discern the truth in a variety of contexts,
from online news to scientific claims, to personal interactions. You
will learn more about the scientific method, including scientific
skepticism and how to tell science from non-science.
You will also find out how your mind might block you from figuring out
the truth with a discussion of common biases, heuristics, and
fallacies, including ways to overcome them. Knowing more about
these will also help you deal more effectively with difficult people,
including those trying to sell you phony ideas or dodgy products.
By learning more about how to sort the truth from the lies, you can
reach better conclusions and make better decisions. You can also
help others who do not yet have this knowledge to feel more
confident and confident in themselves.
This book’s author is Camilla J. Croucher. She graduated with a
Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of Cambridge in 2007
and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at City, University of
London. Her academic specialisms include emotional memory, visual
processing, and judgment and decision-making. She is outstanding
at statistics but does not want to bore you with that. She has also
worked in retail, clinical research management, e-commerce,
learning support, and (of course) freelance writing. Her interest in the
illusions created by the eye and mind remained constant across
each of these roles, and she very much enjoyed composing this text
for you.The book is not a definitive guide on thinking critically, and it
is not a philosophy text. Instead, it summarizes reliable research
findings and experts’ opinions and suggests techniques and practice
exercises that you can use in your daily life. So, are you ready to
explore what it means to be a critical thinker?
 1

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A CRITICAL THINKER IN THIS

DAY AND AGE

C hancellor Sham Anderson took a deep breath as she hung up the

phone. Marvin Keller, the Chair of the University Finance
Committee, was not answering her calls. That morning's big news
was the resignation of the Director of Loofberger Inc., sparking the
company's stock’s sudden plummet.
Naturally, Anderson now had serious concerns about the University's
multi-million dollar investment in that very company. The decision to
invest in a new corporation touting a completely novel product was
risky, of course. However, the University had the funds despite huge
pressure from the science and technology faculty.
Building a new space research center would allow the University to
build probes to look for life on various moons within our solar
system. This would not be possible without a vast amount of money.
The company performed excellently from the outset, suggesting a
low risk. The Finance Committee quickly decided the kudos was
worth it. They would invest in Loofberger.
Soon, the first hints emerged that Loofberger was in trouble. The
product was not selling as expected. The share price slowly
declined. Nevertheless, Keller assured the Committee that this was a
blip and that things would pick up soon.
Sham startled as her cell phone rang: an unknown number. A
somber voice confirmed that Loofberger had gone bust: the
University lost its entire investment.
Hindsight revealed several clues.
Marvin Keller had failed to disclose that his brother-in-law was also
Loofberger's Director. As a lifelong friend as well as a colleague,
Anderson had not thought to question his recommendation. A few
months after finalizing the deal, Keller took an extended sabbatical to
work on special projects at his lake house.
What about Loofberger's initial promising market data? It turned out
to be too good to be true—a fairly clever fake.
The University never got its space center, and many of those staff
relocated to other, less embarrassing organizations. Anderson’s
peers advised her to take early retirement, which she did. The
student body voted to paint the canteen ceiling black in memory of
the loss, and little paint chips flaked off, making it look like the night
sky.
The finance expert in this scenario had questionable motives, but
nobody had thought to question them. Expert advice is often
trustworthy, but we should not take everything at face value.
Question how you know that source is an expert and how they know
what they know.
Making complex decisions is difficult when we have limited
information, but it is still important to investigate its source and
content by gathering evidence to support our decisions and
conclusions.
Critical thinking is a powerful approach that can help you to make
better decisions. Critical thinkers do not passively receive
information. Instead, they apply the rules of logic and their own
experience to interpret the messages they hear and see properly [1].
Getting Started With Critical Thinking
Our intuitive reasoning processes work well for everyday purposes,
but they may lead us in the wrong direction when applying them in
more complex situations. This is because our brains love a good
shortcut. In contrast, critical thinking reduces shortcuts and
automatic processing: it is a self-disciplined process.
That is not to say that critical thinking is completely different from
intuitive thinking and reasoning; it may be more effortful, but anybody
can think critically. The principles are fairly simple, but we know that
people do not apply them consistently.
Faulty reasoning is commonplace. People smoke, despite the known
health dangers. They gamble to excess, selling property and losing
loved ones to feed their addiction.
Critical thinking is vital to avoid faulty reasoning pitfalls, as it helps us
become better at solving problems. Unfortunately, faulty reasoning
can become habitual. For instance, if somebody reasons to
themselves that ‘astrology is just a bit of fun, we do not need to
prove it like a science,’ that is fine, but what if they apply the same
reasoning to the next pseudoscientific idea? This ‘slippery slope’ can
make us vulnerable to more unproven ideas and even manipulation
[2].

Even though critical thinking is composed of simple principles, you

must practice getting better. The best critical thinkers share several
common traits [3]:
They ask questions: They identify relevant information and pair it
with abstract ideas. They draw valid conclusions and then test them.
They never assume that they got it right the first time: They try
different approaches and ways of framing the problem.
They conclude by reasoning, as opposed to rationalizing: Reasoning
means using logic to conclude, whereas rationalizing means finding
a logic that fits the conclusion [1]. In other words, rationalizing is
reasoning done backward.
They are superb at connecting with others: This is not only about
sharing their ideas clearly; it is about listening and co-operation. You
can even enhance your critical thinking by working with people with
highly developed critical thinking skills [1].
So why is critical thinking important? For one thing, it helps us to
distinguish between facts, opinions, claims, and evidence. We must
delineate these four closely connected concepts because others
may use them to persuade, misinform, or even manipulate us.

Facts
What exactly is a fact? More importantly, how do you know
something is a fact? What if it is merely an opinion or a claim?
A fact is a piece of information that we can verify. We can observe it,
or we can find out it is true from a reliable source. For example, the
atomic number of carbon is six; the US Civil War took place between
1861 and 1865; Armstrong was the first to walk on the Moon. These
are all facts.
Without diving deep into philosophy, we can note here that ‘truth’ is
an abstract idea. Nobody can say for certain what is real (or fake,
come to that). Later, when we look at scientific skepticism, we will
examine this in more detail. For now, let’s assume that truth can
exist and that critical thinking at least brings us closer to it.
As a critical thinker, you should inspect any so-called fact you
encounter. How do you know it is a fact and not an assumption? Try
to verify the ‘fact’ yourself; it may be an assumption if it cannot be
verified. On investigating, you may find the assumption is incorrect.
In some cases, assumptions are the best we can do. For example, if
you were designing a novel product, at first, you might assume that it
would appeal to customers who buy related products. Later, you
could gain evidence using market research.
When you investigate a given fact, you might find that it is outdated
or even a total misconception. Scrutinize facts, and learn to
recognize the good facts and reject the bad ones.

Opinions
Opinions may resemble facts, but they are subjective judgments.
People often misrepresent opinions as facts, perhaps because
strongly held opinions may even feel factual. Opinions are always
evaluative or comparative, even if they use the same form as a fact
by stating that something ‘is’ something. Saying that something is
the best must, therefore, be an opinion.
Take this statement:
“Joseph Bloggs is the best downhill skier because they have won the
most gold medals.”
This sentence is an opinion based on a fact. You can verify or falsify
the fact that they won most medals by reading medals tables. The
opinion that such a fact makes Joseph Bloggs the best downhill skier
cannot be verified: it is somebody’s perspective.
A new skier may be the best, even when they have not won anything
yet. They might be able to beat Joseph Bloggs in every race, but if
medal count is the best measure of skiing ability, the new skier
cannot be said to be the best.
Our motivations, attitudes, and emotional states have huge effects
on our opinions [2,4]. This renders opinions vulnerable to all sorts of
biases; not surprisingly, two people with identical information can
very easily hold opposite opinions. Of course, opinions can change
completely over time and need not be based on facts at all.

Claims
Like opinions, claims are often wrongly presented as facts. Claims
may be factual, but the definition of claim is an assertion presented
without proof. Therefore, distinguishing claims from facts is easy;
you just need to check whether the source supplies any evidence for
the claim.
Claims can be implied rather than stated. ‘Before and after’ photos in
beauty adverts are a good example. The adverts may or may not
overtly claim that the treatment improves the skin, but the skin
certainly looks healthier in the ‘after’ photo.
Companies produce adverts to make viewers spend money rather
than showing them the truth, resulting in advertisers presenting
claims as facts. But claims crop up in the wild, too.
Conspiracists claim that mankind did not land on the Moon in 1969,
but NASA faked the mission using camera tricks in a television
studio. We can say this is a claim because there is no evidence of
the proposed fakery.
A fake Moon landing would entail faking a lot of evidence. Fake
technical data and fake filmed footage are only the beginning. NASA
would have had to have persuaded their entire staff to give fake
testimony, not to mention fake paperwork.

Evidence
It is not just conspiracy nuts who persist even when faced with
overwhelming evidence against their beliefs [2]. We all do it. At times,
we are all guilty of ignoring or misunderstanding evidence. This
leads us to an important question: what exactly is evidence, and how
should we use it?
Evidence is an everyday term, but as critical thinkers, we need a
more technical definition. Evidence refers to a body of information
that supports a given position.
We typically use evidence to prove or disprove a belief or decide
whether a judgment or opinion is valid. Of course, you need
evidence from different sources.
A good body of evidence comes from multiple reliable sources.
Imagine overhearing a conversation at a party. Somebody claims
that ‘investments are a great way to make money.’ A successful
investor is listening; he nods enthusiastically and starts bragging
about the huge profits he has made. Wouldn’t you want to hear the
other side?
The more evidence supports a conclusion, the more likely that
conclusion is to be true. You might collect evidence from pre-existing
sources or decide to gather your own.
Picture a range of experts who are interested in why people fall into
problem gambling. The medic does not agree that sociology surveys
are the best way to research this, but the sociology professor thinks
they are the only way that makes sense.
However, the two researchers would examine different aspects of
addiction. The medic in this example decides to look at physical
differences in the bodies and brains of addicts and non-addicts;
perhaps pre-existing variation predicts who can gamble casually
without becoming addicted. In contrast, the sociologist wants to look
at socioeconomic factors like gamblers’ family situations, housing
issues, and poverty.
The gambling study could involve neuroscience, interviews with
gamblers, big data science, and more, in addition to surveys and
clinical studies. All these approaches are helpful because they look
at the problem at different levels. The resulting body of evidence,
taken together and processed according to good logic, could
generate more robust data than the medic or the professor alone.
The group can investigate all potential causes of gambling and
compare how well all the different factors predict who becomes a
problem gambler.
In conclusion, uncertainty is a good thing because it drives us to
examine problems in more depth. You can never gather all the facts
or examine all the evidence. The best you can do is test your ideas
and beliefs and improve them as you go along, based on a wide
range of evidence.

Facts Versus Non-Facts

Critical thinkers evaluate everyday information rather than simply
absorbing it. You must be clear about the division between facts and
opinions, fiction, and emotions.

Facts Versus Opinions

Firstly, discerning facts from opinions is vital. Remember, we can
prove facts, whereas we cannot prove opinions (subjective points of
view). Alleged facts bombard us daily, but these are often opinions in
disguise.
Business documents, and even scientific reports, sometimes report
opinions as facts. Authors may commit this error while chasing
positive results to persuade others to agree with them. Sometimes,
they may misunderstand how to verbalize the information. For
example, it is incorrect to present opinions based on data as though
the opinions were the data.
The same facts presented differently can lead to opposite
conclusions. The danger is that readers then treat the opinions as
facts.

Facts Versus Fiction

Secondly, we need to separate fact from fiction. This is more difficult
than it sounds. Labeled fiction is not a concern, although fantasists
may claim that it is somehow real. The internet is full of people who
believe in unlikely things.
One such unlikely belief is that aliens have left Stargates all around
the universe, including on Earth. These Stargates allow beings to
travel instantly from one planet to another. You might recall a long-
running TV drama on this theme.
There are many more examples of people taking science fiction as
fact. However, subtler categories of fiction do exist. Conspiracy
theories are good examples of probable fictions presented as facts,
whether due to error, lies, wishful thinking, or confusion [1,2].

Facts Versus Emotions

It is also vital to distinguish facts from emotions. Just as we can feel
so confident in opinions that we report them as factual, our emotions
can seduce us into behaving as though they too are real [5]. We also
believe that arguments that support our pre-existing attitudes are
stronger [4].
Telling facts and emotions apart may seem easy, especially if you
regard yourself as a rational thinker, but it is not always obvious.
Let’s consider a married couple having a heated argument. One yells
at the other:
“I hate you! You’re always telling me what to do. I wish we’d never
met!”
These ideas feel vivid and extremely real at the time, but once the
speaker has cooled off and reconciled with their partner, they will
regret saying these words. They realize that the ideas were
expressions of emotions rather than the truth about their relationship.
Attraction forms the basis of many relationships, and attraction is
another emotion that colors our perceptions. Earlier in the
relationship just mentioned, the partners might have said things like:
“You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen. You’re not like
other people; you’re better.”
Again, these ideas feel concrete and factual at the time, but they are
simply angry words from the argument in reality. Positive emotion
may be more enjoyable, but it is no more real than negative emotion.
So, how can we tell the difference between facts and emotions?
First, let’s draw a line between emotional quality and emotional state
[6].

Emotional quality is the emotion that somebody wants to convey in a

picture, article, advert, or other messages. Usually, charity adverts
show people or animals in a pitiful state, perhaps crying children, to
make the viewer feel sad and guilty. In this case, sadness is the
emotional quality of the advert.
Your emotional state is how you feel right now: calm, excited, wistful,
or nervous.
You may feel the intended emotional quality in response to the
charity ad or not. That is irrelevant. To critically assess the message,
you only need to appraise what emotion you are supposed to feel
and be aware of it as you process the message.
When assessing a claim or message, note whether the author is
mistaking their own emotions for facts. People often feel strongly
about causes, and we know that emotions drive us to justify our
decisions and actions.
We are all affected by our emotional states and past experiences.
The tricky thing is that emotions feel urgent at the time. Realizing
that emotions affect your cognition is only the first step.
To compensate for this, we should try to step back from our own core
effect (how we feel when we take in information) instead of viewing
the information objectively. Pause and recognize the emotion for
what it is, a separate entity from the information you are processing.
Similarly, a message’s emotional quality is separate from its
meaning.
We need to compensate for emotions like this because our
emotional states affect our reasoning processes significantly.
Moreover, we use our emotions to rationalize our decisions and
behavior.
Shopping is a good example. Consumers often buy things they do
not want or need, which is not a problem itself, as it supports a
healthy economy. Excessive spending can become an issue, though.
For example, if somebody cannot resist spending $300 on a new
pair of sneakers when they also need to pay their rent, but they
justify buying the sneakers because they really want them.
Research suggests that clinical staff, such as nurses and doctors,
regularly make decisions biased by emotions [7]. Ideally, medical
reasons, not emotional ones, should inform choices like whether to
discontinue treatment. Therefore, medics educate their trainees to
be as objective as possible, even in the face of highly emotive
situations.
Emotional intelligence is hugely important for these clinicians. They
must not let their emotional responses drive their decisions, but at
the same time, they must be empathic and kind to patients and their
families. Nevertheless, the study shows that decisions remain biased
even under these conditions.
Whether you are a doctor or not, you probably make important
decisions every day, so be mindful of your emotional state in reading
or receiving a message. Your emotional brain might be biasing you
towards noticing consistent information if you agree or disagree very
strongly. We are more liable to agree with arguments that support
what we already feel [4]. This emotional bias means you could miss
important details and facts.
In contrast to our innate emotions, we can deliberately learn critical
thinking and logic [1,2]. As intelligent animals, we have the power to
figure out new ways of thinking, develop these throughout
civilization, and pass the techniques down to future generations.
Compare this to learning a language. We are born with the capacity
for it but need to acquire the pieces (letter sounds, words, and so on)
and put them together into something meaningful and useful.
To assess information rationally and avoid mingling facts, opinions,
fictions, and emotions, we need to practice and use our critical
thinking skills. Then, we can make informed judgments and
decisions that are more likely to be effective.

The Message Behind The Message

Before we can make sense of the information we receive, we must
fully understand the entire message. We cannot evaluate the
information successfully if we do not investigate who made it and
why: the content is only part of the story.

Source Of Message
Firstly, find out about the source. Sources are individuals or
organizations, and the following advice applies to both.
A source may be an expert on some topics and naive about others.
Sources may be biased, have special interests in certain topics, or
pet theories. They may be more or less reliable, more or less
trustworthy. Think about the following aspects of the source:
Is it an academic or government publication? We have to assume
these are more trustworthy than commentators. This is because their
vested interest lies in providing accurate information for the
population, whereas commentators’ motivation is more variable.
Is the source paid (or rewarded in some other way) for conveying the
message? Publishers can and do pay experts to communicate
specific information.
Where do they get their information? Is it a primary or secondary
source? Secondary sources can misquote primary sources. They
might even treat other secondary sources as if they were primary
sources. This magnifies errors and misconceptions. Find the original
information if you want to assess it fairly.
What does your expertise tell you? If the source is somebody you
know, perhaps you know that they make outlandish claims quite
often. This could factor into your assessment.
When analyzing messages, especially from people you know,
remember that people’s reasoning skills vary. The source may not be
aware of all the aspects just described, and they may feel that they
have made a very good case. Perhaps with a good debate, you can
help them to improve.
At times, we all forget our deep-seated assumptions and
motivations. Do not forget that critical thinking takes practice.

Purpose Of Message
Next, examine why the source composed the message. Knowing a
message’s purpose may alert you to possible distortions and half-
truths. What was their real motivation?
Here, you need to view the message’s fine details. If it is on a
website, what kind of website? For example, somebody’s private
blog has a different purpose from a government website. See
whether they have declared any interest in the products or topics
they discuss; like influencers, blog writers are often given ‘freebies’
in exchange for promoting the product.
A message might not be an obvious advert, but still be a promotional
text. For example, companies often feature blogs about their
products and services; you would not necessarily take these texts at
face value. Instead, think about what interest the company might
have in the topic: web traffic, affiliate links, direct purchases, or
simply to get you reading more about pet insurance.
People make persuasive messages for many reasons, and they can
be subtle. Analyze the language to detect whether the message
might be covert persuasion rather than unbiased information.
Persuasive texts may feature many adjectives and adverbs, chatty
language, and high-school rhetorical devices like alliteration and the
‘rule of three.’
Word choices also reveal the author or speaker’s biases and
opinions. Say you are reading reviews of a scientific book about
climate change. One reviewer refers to the ‘climate scare,’ whereas
the other calls it the ‘climate emergency.’ They have a different
opinion, but in the context, both phrases mean the same thing.
Another aspect of purpose is that the source may prefer one
conclusion or decision from the outset. They might then filter out and
distort the evidence to support the position they have already
chosen. You can tackle this issue by using alternative sources to
research the topic and filling in those gaps yourself.

Field Of Work
As well as the source’s motivation and the message’s purpose, you
must understand at least something about their field of work. This is
even more important if it is not your specialty. You need to get to
grips with the basics.
Firstly, what are the fundamental goals? Imagine a hospital where
radiographers and nurses work together to produce and analyze
magnetic resonance images. Radiographers aim to produce the best
images possible, whereas nurses aim to keep patients comfortable
and well-informed about the procedure. Sometimes these goals
might clash since the scanning procedure is uncomfortable and
noisy. Specialist staff at all workplaces need to work together in this
way to be effective.
Similarly, to assess the truth or falsehood of a message, you must
understand the sphere the source of the message works in. This
contextual information enables you to judge the message on its own
merits. Further, there is no point judging the quality of a
radiographer’s work in the same way you would judge nursing care.
Secondly, what basic concepts or assumptions does the source
employ? Individuals may not even be aware of their basic
assumptions, but you, as a critical thinker, should be able to discern
them.
In everyday life, a basic assumption might be that when you enter a
table service restaurant, you wait in line, and then somebody shows
you to a table. You do not have to ask somebody what to do; you just
know. Similarly, physicists assume that light’s speed is a universal
constant; they do not attempt to measure it in every experiment.
Finally, what kinds of data do they use to expand their knowledge
and inform their decisions? Whether you agree with the specific
methods or not, try to assess them fairly rather than from a
prejudiced position. Be flexible yet rigorous, like a scientist.
Research the message behind the message you receive, and put
your critical thinking skills to good use.

Reliability And Reputation Of Source

Critical thinking is an extremely powerful approach, which most
people do not use most of the time. One way to dissect claims more
effectively is to be aware of our psychological tendencies. A further
strategy is gathering evidence from multiple sources and assessing
the sources’ reliability and reputation.
Additionally, we can use critical thinking techniques to assess the
reliability and reputation of the information source. When a piece of
information seems factual, the next step is to analyze its reliability.
Look at the source of information: Is it primary or secondary?
Primary sources are the originators of the information, whereas
secondary sources are based on primary sources.
If secondary, check whether they report accurately and completely:
Sometimes, secondary sources can leave things out or report
information selectively to support their own argument, which may
differ from the primary source’s argument. Find the primary source
and see how different it is. You may observe that the secondary
source reports their opinions about the facts.
Now, look for evidence of reputation. If the source claims they are a
world authority on kidney tumors, find out more about them.
Where do they work? University, hospital, or private company? You
can then assess their employer’s reputation as well.
What do other experts (or world authorities) say about them? Are
they mainstream or fringe? Accepted authority or controversial?
Have they won prestigious awards, grants, or contracts? These all
indicate that somebody is recognized and successful in their field.
What organizations do they belong to? This could include
overarching professional bodies (e.g., a therapist belonging to the
American Psychological Association) or more niche bodies (e.g., the
Society For Neuroscience).
What else have they written about? If somebody has written a huge
amount on diverse topics, they may be journalists or interested
amateurs, rather than an expert on the particular topic.
By assessing the reliability of information sources, we can exclude
those with weak foundations. An accepted authority on a subject is
likely to be a more reliable source than a relatively inexperienced
person who is new to the field.
Similarly, a person or organization with a sharp focus on the subject
at hand is likely to be more reliable than a generalist since their
experience and knowledge run so much deeper. They are also more
likely to base their information on primary sources rather than
secondary or tertiary sources.
Once you have determined the source’s reliability and reputation,
you can put this together with the other factors we have discussed.
This framework enables you to interpret messages more actively,
empowering you to make better decisions and arrive at more
accurate conclusions.

Action Steps
Now that we have explored the features of critical thinking and how
to interpret messages better, it is time to put some of these ideas into
action. Try these suggested exercises.
1. The Fact Check
Identify a purported fact, either from your work or the media. This
can be anything, as long as you can read it in context and research it
to analyze it.
Suggestions:

There is life on other planets in the universe.

Humans only use 10% of their brains.
People with a college degree earn more money than people
without.

Use critical thinking to evaluate your chosen fact systematically. Use

these questions as guidance:

Where does the fact come from?

Is it a reliable source?
How do you know?
What is the author's motivation for presenting this fact in this
context?
What is the evidence for this fact?
Is the evidence presented objectively, or is there evidence of
bias?
 Is it a fact, or is it an opinion?
Has emotion influenced it?
Is the source using emotion to try to influence you (the
reader?)

Feel free to ask any other relevant questions you can think of, based
on what we have looked at in this chapter. Now that you have done
this once, you have a framework for assessing messages you
receive using critical thinking.

2. Observational Study
Firstly, visualize a person you think has good critical thinking skills.
Write a few notes about them using the questions below, or make a
mind map.
What kind of person are they? What have they said or done that
makes you think they are great at critical thinking? What outcomes
do they produce?
Examine the evidence you have written down, and conclude whether
this person is a good critical thinker. Perhaps bring this exercise to
mind next time you speak to them or witness their critical thinking,
and make a few more observations.
Now repeat the same process for somebody you think has poor
critical thinking skills, including what makes you think they are bad at
critical thinking. Put your notes or mind maps side by side and
compare them.
This exercise will help you focus on the good (or bad) critical
thinkers’ traits and behaviors. It also starts you thinking about the
real-world applications of critical thinking.

Summary
In the story at the beginning, the University relied on its staff to
disclose conflicts of interest, and they trusted the market data that
the company reported. However, multiple factors, including
misplaced trust in Keller, led them to invest in a failing company.
A poor decision cost the University more than just money. Why?
Could this have been prevented if the Finance Committee had
applied what we had learned in this chapter? Perhaps.
Emotions played a role in the investment: the desire for success,
trust in Keller. They appraised the company’s success incorrectly
due to inadequate evidence (they relied on the market data). Keller,
the investment recommendation source, turned out to be unreliable
due to having a personal interest in the company.
In the story, the University did not have all the information needed to
make the correct decision. No doubt, you will have been in similar
situations yourself. Hopefully, the techniques covered so far have
equipped you with more tools to deal with information you encounter
in the future.
Apart from features of the information we receive, what else keeps
us from getting to the truth? The answer is complex, and we will
delve into it very soon in the next chapter.

Takeaways
1. Critical thinkers must distinguish between facts, opinions, claims,
and evidence.
2. You should be realistic and even humble about your knowledge.
However, pairing logic with your own experience is a key part of
thinking critically.
3. Remember to assess the author and their motivation, as well as
the message.
4. Use multiple reliable sources, including other people, to help you
reason towards better conclusions and decisions.
 2

WHAT KEEPS US FROM GETTING TO THE TRUTH?

“M om! Dad! I need to speak to you!” the kid yelled. He had just got
back from his first day at grade school, and he had serious beef
with his parents.
“What is it?” asked the concerned parents.
“The other kids all laughed at me.”
A sad tale of juvenile bullying, you might think. Yes, but there was
more to it. The kid had started school with something fairly crucial
missing from his social life.
His parents were overjoyed when he was born. As high achievers
themselves, they wanted their children to do well in life.
The kid’s father had heard about an interesting research study. He
spoke with his spouse, and they both agreed it could not harm their
child.
The study was the famous Mozart Effect. First published in the early
1990s, this experiment indicated that students who listened to
Mozart did better on certain cognitive tests than those who did not
listen to Mozart [8]. The students performed as though their IQ was
8-9 points higher than those who listened to a relaxation tape or
silence. Furthermore, a prestigious scientific journal published the
study.
This got parents, as well as scientists, very excited. Everybody
wanted to grab those extra IQ points for their child. There may even
have been a boom in baby headphones’ sales and Best Of Mozart
CDs (this was the 1990s, remember).
Our family took this to an extreme, however. The kid had passed
unnoticed through kindergarten, but by grade school, his deficit was
apparent. Shockingly, he had never listened to anything other than
Mozart.
More, his test scores were average at best, and he was the victim of
several bullying incidents within the first few weeks of school.
That was when his Mom decided to investigate further.
Scientists found the Mozart Effect very hard to replicate, but they
kept trying. More often than not, Mozart listeners performed about as
well as those who listened to different music or silence [9,10].
The kid's Mom also found out that the cognitive enhancement effect
was small and probably only lasted a while after the music finished
— anything mildly stimulating made people do a bit better on the
tests.
What she regretted, though, was naming her son Wolfgang.
With the Mozart effect, one experimental study became so well-
known that people did not even notice the subsequent studies. Other
studies were less dramatic and therefore did not grab the parent’s
attention.
Is Mozart special? In a musical sense, of course. But there is
probably not a special Mozart module in the brain that switches on
superior learning processes.
The failure to replicate the Mozart Effect suggests that the original
effect was due to general characteristics of the music, like
complexity or interestingness. Aspects of the experimental situation
might also have led to these seemingly impressive results [9,10].
Recent analysis suggests that scientists published more ‘Mozart-
positive’ results due to publication bias. This is similar to confirmation
bias, which we will look at in detail in this chapter.

Our brains construct our perceptions [1] and memories, so we need

to constantly evaluate and question our ideas. Our brains construct
an impression of a three-dimensional world based on a two-
dimensional projection on the retina. We perceive three dimensions
even in two-dimensional drawings in a way that feels automatic [11].
Similarly, the first idea that comes to mind from memory could easily
result from our cognitive processes rather than being a true reflection
or record of reality. Therefore, we must strive to become more aware
of how our minds can distort reality.
Thinking critically (or using sound reasoning) is not as simple as it
seems. All of us harbor deeply ingrained habits that influence our
judgment of people, events, situations, and issues.

How Our Brains Short-Circuit Our Logic

Thinking logically, like any variety of thinking, uses our everyday
cognitive processes and systems. In brief, these include attention,
memory, judgment, as well as decision-making and problem-solving.
Beliefs, emotions, fallacies, biases, and heuristics all affect our
cognitive processes.
We have to be realistic about this, but not unduly pessimistic. Our
judgment and decisions will tend to be pushed in different directions
by distorted perceptions and memories.
Fortunately, we can reduce these tendencies by knowing what the
distortions are and how they work. We can compensate for them, but
firstly, we should define and explain each of the key terms.

Beliefs
Beliefs are an important part of human life. We all hold prior beliefs
about things, people, and ideas, and one generation passes them on
to the next via social learning. Sometimes, we believe what we want
to believe despite evidence against it; we can refer to this as wishful
thinking [12].
So, where do erroneous beliefs come from? Our brains do not intend
to deceive us, but knowing the truth is not always their main concern.
Erroneous beliefs are a byproduct of the psychologically adaptive
process of social learning [2]. Social learning supports many useful
tasks, such as learning our native language. As social creatures, we
need social cohesion and shared experiences, and we start paying
attention to other humans (and potentially learning from them) as
infants [13]. So, it is only natural that we are so open to acquiring
ideas directly from others, especially those we trust.
Second-hand information has great potential to lead to false or
distorted beliefs. Humans love to tell good stories, and the storyteller
may highlight certain aspects and ignore others, either to make the
story more entertaining or to emphasize certain parts of it [2].
In turn, prior beliefs can lead to biased perceptions of people,
objects, and events, thereby affecting future perceptions and
experiences. People can then pass these biased beliefs onto others.
This may remind you of the children’s game Telephone or Chinese
Whispers, in which one person whispers a verbal message to the
next along a long line. The original message disappears by the end
of the game.
Another aspect of our beliefs is that we tend to believe what we want
to believe [2], and this includes our beliefs about ourselves. We may
adopt socially acceptable beliefs to avoid being rejected by others [1].
Like many of our psychological tendencies, there is nothing wrong
with this, but at times it could obstruct our critical thinking.

Emotions
Social emotions such as trust and the desire for acceptance can
affect what we believe, but emotions have huge effects on cognition.
Psychologists have documented mood congruent effects in memory
and attention [14,15].
This means that people tend to notice and remember information
that fits with their current mood; you may observe this phenomenon
casually in everyday life now that you are looking for it. For example,
when somebody feels joyful, they might notice beautiful scenery or
enjoy a good meal more than when they are in a neutral mood. Our
emotions, therefore, influence not only what information goes in but
also how our minds process it.
In controlled experiments, a scared or sad person is more likely to
perceive others’ faces as threatening or negative. Someone
experiencing a happy, exuberant mood is more likely to label faces
as friendly. The first person might be more likely to recall unpleasant
events from their own life, whereas the second would recall more
happy and joyful experiences [14,15].
This example illustrates that memory retrieval is an active process;
your memory is not like a library issuing you the same memory every
time. Instead, the cognitive system reconstructs the memory each
time [1].

Fallacies
The term fallacies often refer to commonly held false beliefs,
including some examples of folk wisdom. For example, many people
believe that more babies are born during the full moon [2]. In fact
(verifiable, reliable fact, that is!), no more babies are born on the full
moon than during any other phase of the moon.
False belief fallacies can affect our reasoning processes if we
assume that pieces of received wisdom are true without examining
them in more detail.
Fallacies also refer to logical fallacies. These are errors of reasoning
commonly known as non-sequiturs. To reason properly, we must
make sure that our conclusions follow logically from our arguments’
premises. The study of logical fallacies has a lengthy history, and
there are many of them [1].

Heuristics And Biases

Biases are another important feature of the cognitive system that
affects how our brains absorb and process information. Attentional
biases send our attention towards or away from certain things. We
also experience unintentional biases in decision-making and
judgment.
An interesting bias to note is egocentric bias, in which egocentric
means ‘towards the self.’ People consistently rate their abilities as
above average [16]. Can you see what is wrong here? By definition,
most people cannot perform above average because the average
falls in the middle. Scientists have observed this effect in all sorts of
situations: self-assessed leadership qualities to the likelihood of
getting cancer, and all sorts of people from students to professors
[16].

Biases are important to understand here because they can lead

directly to fallacies, and they may also support erroneous beliefs.
Heuristics are mental short-cuts [1,17]. One example is the availability
heuristic when we use the most easily available information to solve
a problem. We could also call heuristics rules of thumb: quick
methods to solve problems without sitting and doing a lot of math or
logic. Heuristics are useful, but they lead to approximate answers
and lead us to get things wrong [17].
In some situations, heuristics can lead to systematic biases. This is a
serious issue for critical thinking because people then ignore other
relevant information.
So why do we have heuristics? Our ancestors needed fast, efficient
solutions to problems during evolution, but they required precisely
correct solutions. They succeeded enough to survive; otherwise,
they would not be our ancestors. As a result, our brains happily hold
on to errors, as long as what we know works well enough in practice,
even when our daily experience completely contradicts the heuristic.

Examples: Why They Are A Problem

Emotions can cause problems when they interfere with logical
reasoning. Think about aphorisms that we use in speech every day.
For example, nobody wants to ‘let their heart rule their head,’ but
perhaps they want to follow their ‘gut instinct.’ Which is right?
The answer is not straightforward. Our emotional state can make a
huge difference in how we perceive and interpret incoming
information. Moods are transient, so we regard decisions and
conclusions made under highly emotional conditions as unreliable.
However, emotions are far more vivid to us than cold reasoning
processes [18]. Accounting for their influence is, therefore, a difficult
task.
Fallacies of logic can occur without awareness, or they can be used
deliberately as a manipulative tool. Both can get in the way of us
knowing the truth. Fallacies are a particular problem because we do
not reason things out in isolation. Often, the outcome of one
reasoning process feeds into the next.
For example, a CEO might use critical thinking to work out a plan to
expand into a new business area, beginning by figuring out which
products would work best, then moving on to selecting a team to
lead the new venture, then on to planning the expansion in more
detail. If they fall into logical fallacies in the project’s initial stages,
the decisions may not be optimal, putting later stages at risk.
Cognitive biases and heuristics can make us believe the impossible.
For example, given specific probabilities of two events, logic enables
us to work out both events’ probabilities. If event A is 50% likely to
happen, and event B is only 10% likely to happen, logically, you
would expect people to realize that the two together are even less
likely than event B.
However, this is not what happens. Even medical professionals
judging the likelihood of symptoms make this mistake [19]. This
example shows how pervasive our cognitive biases are and that they
sometimes happen without awareness [11]. Biases like this can easily
affect people’s thought processes without them realizing it, leading to
unfortunate consequences like bad investments and misdiagnoses.

Top Ten Brain Twisters

In our business of separating sense from nonsense, certain fallacies
are particularly relevant. We need to watch out for these. Where
possible, be careful not to commit these yourself in our everyday
debates and discussions. Some of these are quite subtle. Others are
obvious when you know what to look for.

1. Ad Hominem Fallacy
Ad Hominem means "against the person." It means attacking the
person rather than attacking their point or conclusion [1,20]. You might
witness this fallacy in a political debate.
For example, one politician argues passionately against a new
shopping mall in the town, but their opponent points out that they live
in that town and the new mall would bring a lot of extra noise and
traffic to the area. The opponent argues that the first politician is
therefore concerned for themselves, not necessarily for the
residents.
Here, the first politician described a concept, but the other
proceeded to attack the first as a person, ignoring the debate’s topic.
Attacking the opponent is not an effective way to argue against their
idea, so we describe ad hominem as a fallacy. Like the other factors
described here, this fallacy can lead to divergence from important
topics. People sometimes use it deliberately to divert attention and
discussion away from certain topics.
There are two types of ad hominem [21]. The circumstantial variety is
when a source is speaking hypocritically, and somebody else points
it out. This type of ad hominem may constitute a legitimate
argument, but it is still a logical fallacy. The second variety is abusive
ad hominem, where somebody uses another’s personal traits to
attack their idea, where the traits are unrelated to the idea.
In practice, ad hominem rebuttals are not always irrelevant. Let us
think about a political debate. One politician attacks the other’s
personality or life choices. But what if these are relevant to the
argument?
This example illustrates circumstantial ad hominem: the opponent
points out the first politician’s hypocrisy. Suppose the first politician
had no obvious self-interest in canceling the new mall. In that case,
the opponent could still attack them to convince the populace that
they were not trustworthy and discredit their opinion. This is abusive
ad hominem, a fallacy we should certainly try to avoid.

2. Hasty Generalization
Hasty generalization is another important fallacy that we need to
understand. It means jumping to a conclusion based on too little
evidence. A more technical definition is generalizing from a sample
or single instance to a whole population. However, the sample may
be too small or not representative of the general case.
Imagine a friend saying:
“My Grandpa lived to be ninety-six years old, and he drank a bottle
of whisky every day of his life!”
Unfortunately, Grandad does not prove that alcohol is a recipe for a
long and healthy life. This anecdote, a single example, does not
outweigh decades of medical evidence.
Generations of thinkers have described this fallacy. Aristotle
discussed it first, followed by many more scientists and philosophers.
Alternative names for hasty generalization include faulty
generalization, the fallacy of accident, the fallacy of neglecting
qualifications, and many others [22].
Hasty generalization is easy to commit. People under pressure in
busy jobs, seen as authorities on the topic at hand, might mistakenly
conclude too early. Hasty generalization can also lead to wrongly
assuming that every instance is the same, based on one or two
examples. It can also lead to people ignoring situations where their
conclusion is false. In the example of Grandpa and his whiskey, the
speaker focuses on the single example at the general case’s
expense.
You can see how hasty generalization could become a serious
problem and prevent us from getting to the truth.

3. Bandwagon Fallacy
The bandwagon fallacy means falling into the trap of thinking that the
majority is always right. People commit this fallacy when they agree
with the majority without seeking further information [23].
A classic psychological study revealed that many people would
agree with the majority opinion even when they can see that the
majority is wrong [24]. This experiment’s task was shockingly simple:
participants had to choose the longest line from a few options, and
the lines were different lengths. The experimenters put individual
participants in groups with fake participants, and all the fake ones
chose a line other than the longest line.
Asch’s study showed that many people agreed with the majority but
then expressed concern and confusion because the majority gave
the wrong answer. The experiment put people into an unnatural
situation, but we can also see the bandwagon effect in real-life
scenarios.
In real life, the majority opinion is often fine, and we can choose to
follow it without dire consequences [25]. For example, most people
would agree that dogs make good pets and rhinoceros do not.
Choosing a pet is a relatively benign decision, though.
In contrast, turbulent environments lead to more copying; the correct
path is harder to discern in more ambiguous situations [27]. Think
about how this relates to a high-pressure business environment,
where the situation may be highly complex, to begin with, and
changes rapidly. In these situations, organizations follow each
others’ business decisions more than in a calm and stable business
environment [26].
People and organizations jump on bandwagon for many reasons.
They may genuinely believe it is the best option, or they may see
others they admire jumping on the same bandwagon, which gives
that choice more credence [26]. However, the bandwagon effect is a
failure to apply logic and our own experience. Information about the
majority’s opinions and choices is easy to obtain and quick to
process, but most are not always right. Even the majority opinion of
a group of experts is not always correct.

4. Straw Man Fallacy

People use the straw man fallacy to influence others. It involves
changing somebody's point or argument to set up an easy target,
then knocking it down using your own arguments [1]. It is the logical
equivalent of slapping the person standing next to your opponent.
Straw man arguments are extremely common. Here is an example.
Two politicians hold a public debate a couple of weeks before a local
election. Sam McAdams makes an announcement:
"We will not invest in waste disposal in the city. Instead, we will
reorganize our facilities and raise efficiency by 200% in my first two
months in office."
The crowd cheers, but the opponent has something to say.
"I cannot believe that Mr. McAdams proposes scaling back the
workforce at Waste Disposal!"
The debate proceeds; McAdams tries to point out that he never
suggested getting rid of staff.
People may deliberately set up a straw man to knock it down, but it
can make a big difference. In this example, the opponent set up the
straw man to get McAdams to discuss a different topic. It certainly
steered the debate and probably had a significant effect on the
spectators.

5. Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is a bias towards information that confirms what
we think we already know. Take this example:
Jayshree firmly believes that all Hollywood actors over 30 years old
have had cosmetic surgery. Every time she sees somebody whose
face looks smoother than last year, she points it out to her friends.
What do you think Jayshree says when she watches a movie and
the actors look no different? Nothing, of course. It is unremarkable
that the actors have aged normally. Jayshree notices evidence that
supports her belief, but she is oblivious to the evidence against it.
Confirmation bias is extremely common, affecting what information
we notice and what information we seek out [28]. People have a
strong tendency to seek out information that confirms their beliefs
due to a strong desire to maintain those beliefs [12]. Returning to our
example, Jayshree might search the internet for ‘celebrity plastic
surgery’ information, but she would not be looking for information on
who has not had plastic surgery.
When faced with a message, beware of confirmation bias. It is
similar to wishful thinking: sometimes we believe what we want to
believe, and evidence supporting what we believe grabs our
attention.

6. Anchoring
Anchoring occurs when we over-rely on the most prominent feature
of a situation, person, or object. Anchoring strongly affects our
judgment and estimation [11]. This may be the first piece of
information we encountered or the information that we feel is most
important. Anchors are mainly numerical. For example, someone
taking out car finance might choose to focus on the interest rate,
displayed in large figures on the website, rather than processing
additional information.
Anchoring biases our judgments, but also things like estimates. If
you go to a car showroom, you may have room to negotiate.
Nonetheless, your mind anchors your initial offer around the price
quoted on the window. This is known as anchoring and adjustment:
the first number we see biases our subsequent thinking [1,11].
Psychology experiments show that different anchor points can lead
to vastly different decisions. Furthermore, the anchor does not even
need to be related to the question to influence a person’s answer [17,
29]. This shows that anchoring is pervasive and, to some extent,

automatic.
Anchoring is sometimes also known as a heuristic, and it does
enable our minds to take a shortcut and stop processing more
information. However, it is sometimes automatic and, at other times,
more conscious [11]. Automatic anchoring is more like a suggestion:
the anchor primes somebody’s estimate or choice by activating
similar numbers or ideas in mind, and the person experiencing this
may not be aware of it.
On the other hand, deliberate anchoring is when you consciously
adjust your initial estimate to get closer to the real answer. This
process is more controlled, but people typically stop adjusting too
early, meaning the anchor still biases their final response. We are
more likely to stop adjusting too early if we are under time pressure
or are multi-tasking [11,17].

7. False Consensus
This bias comes from social psychology, the study of personality and
social interaction. False consensus focuses on how we see
ourselves relative to other people. Like the arsonist who might have
once said, 'Well, everyone loves to set fires, don't they?', we
overestimate how common our actions or traits are in the general
population.
This bias emerges when people hear about other people's
responses [30,31]. Whether we read others’ answers to a set of
questions or hear about decisions made in a scenario, we see other
people's responses as more common and typical when they match
our own. Conversely, we see others' responses as strange and
uncommon when they diverge from our own.
False consensus effects are larger when the question is more
ambiguous. One study asked people specific questions like ‘are you
the eldest child?’ and more general questions like ‘are you
competitive?’ The study reported a much more pronounced false
consensus effect with more generic questions [32]. This provides
more evidence for the effect and suggests that when people have
more room to interpret the question in their way, they perceive others
as more similar.

8. Halo Effect
The halo effect is not about angels; think about the type of halo you
see around a streetlamp in the mist. This bias occurs when
something is seen positively because of an association with
something positive, like the light from the streetlamp spreading out
as it refracts through the mist particles. You could call this the ‘glory
by association’ bias.
We all know that first impressions matter in our relationships. This
bias is part of that. Our initial impressions of people and things can
create a halo, overly influencing what we think of them.
When people have to rate others on positive criteria like competence
or intelligence, their ratings are influenced by how warm and friendly
they seem to be [33]. The halo effect even occurs for traits we know
are unrelated, such as height and intelligence.
As you can imagine, the same applies to objects and ideas.
Companies like to use beautiful people and scenery in their adverts
and promotions because this gives potential customers a positive
impression of the company and the product.

9. Availability Heuristic
The availability heuristic affects us when we have to judge probability
or frequency [12]. We assume things we can imagine or recall easily
are more common or more likely. Another way to conceptualize this
is to assume that the first things we think of are the most important
[1,11].

You can see how the availability heuristic can be useful. When
deciding where to take a vacation, your first thought is more likely to
be somewhere you want to visit rather than an obscure destination
you have barely heard of. The desired destination is more available
in your memory, as well as more vivid.
This heuristic draws on several characteristics of human memory
[17,34,35]. Firstly, the recency effect: we have better memories for
recent events or things we have seen or heard recently. Secondly,
we remember things that make us feel emotional. Finally, we
recollect personally relevant and vivid information far better than dry,
boring stuff. Any of these or all of them together can create high
availability.
The opposite is also true. If you cannot think of many instances of
something, you will think it is less common or less probable. When
researchers asked participants for a very large number of
advantages of something, such as their college course, they found it
hard to think of enough. These students rated their course as worse
than others who had to think of fewer advantages [11].
This example seems paradoxical at first, but not when you think of it
in terms of availability. The course’s positive aspects felt less
common to those who were asked for more because they could not
think of the full set of advantages requested. This illustrates how the
availability heuristic could be a problem, depending on questioning
techniques.
If we can call examples to mind easily, we think events are more
likely to have happened before or to happen again in the future. For
instance, people worry that terrorist attacks are possible or even
probable. A young graduate’s family warns them against moving to
New York, Paris, or London because of 'all the terrorists.' These
attacks are readily available to people's minds, so they feel that
attacks are more likely than they are.
Availability is a useful heuristic because it allows us to make rapid
judgments and decisions. People are more influenced by availability
when they process information quickly and automatically, for
example, when feeling happy or distracted [11].

10. Representativeness Heuristic

The representativeness heuristic happens when we judge things
according to how similar they are to things we already know about
[2,17].

Representativeness operates when we have to judge probabilities.

Specifically:
Categorizing items: the probability that this object, person, or
situation belongs to a given category.
Origins: the probability that this event comes from a given process.
Projections: the probability that a given process will generate an
event in the future.
Here is an example of the representativeness heuristic in action.
Someone says:
"Ryan wears glasses, so I think he is a computer scientist rather than
a farmer."
The speaker has a stereotype of a typical computer scientist in their
mind, and Ryan fits that stereotype on one criterion. Hence, they
categorize him as a computer scientist (see [17] for the original
example).
When they use the representativeness heuristic, people are often
extremely confident, although a vague impression, rather than a
range of evidence, determined their choice. They have not
considered the percentage of farmers and computer scientists in the
general population, for example. Therefore, this heuristic is likely to
lead to incorrect conclusions at times, and it probably fuels some of
our human failings, such as prejudice and discrimination.

How To Un-Bias Your Brain

Beliefs and Emotions
The first step in dealing with erroneous beliefs is to use logic: look at
what else must be true for the stated belief to be true [1].
Next, realize that some beliefs are simply false, and you can prove
this by finding evidence against them. You can easily disprove a
friend who firmly believes that Martina Navratilova has won the most
Grand Slams in women’s tennis history. This type of belief is a
mistaken fact, so you can assess it the same way you would assess
a purported fact or an unsubstantiated claim. You can perform a
quick web search and find the correct answer from a reliable source,
such as the awarding body (the Women’s Tennis Association).
In contrast, other beliefs are not falsifiable. These may be acceptable
on their own but at the same time incompatible with other beliefs. In
this situation, you need to assess each belief’s veracity and arrive at
a new understanding.
For example, people who believe the Earth is flat must also hold
other, consistent beliefs. They must believe that modern-day
transport companies lie about the distances involved in traveling
close to the North and South Poles. If the world were flat, one of
these poles would be at the center, and the other would be a loop
around the edge of the world. Logically, you would only need to
disprove one of the beliefs to falsify the whole set.
Emotions are potentially more difficult to deal with. Instead of
suppressing or ignoring your own emotions, acknowledge that they
exist and can affect your judgment. This simple change can remove
some of their power and help you avoid falling into the trap of
rationalizing [1].
Discerning emotions from facts are the major way you can avoid
getting side-tracked by your core affect and emotional content in
messages and communications. Refer back to Chapter 1 for more
details.

Fallacies, Biases, And Heuristics

To combat these three, we first need to acknowledge that we are
human and our minds work in this way. There is nothing intrinsically
wrong with it. We can follow this with some principles of critical
thinking:
Examine the facts of the matter: Make sure you consider everything
that could be relevant and ensure that the information is factual
rather than beliefs or opinions.
Take a mindful approach: Realize that situations are constantly in
flux. Get the best information you can at the time.
Question everything: Only make assumptions when the facts are not
yet available.
Compensate for biases: Sometimes this is straightforward, other
times less so.
Draw your own conclusions: Ideally, these should be based on a full
understanding of the available facts and in the light of your own
extensive experience.
To deal with the ad hominem fallacy, understand that circumstantial
ad hominem is sometimes a valid way to critique a person if their
circumstances or traits are relevant to what they are arguing. Do not
be tempted to commit it yourself unless as a specific tactic to throw
off your opponent. Abusive ad hominem, on the other hand, converts
a discussion into an exchange of personal attacks. When you
encounter ad hominem arguments, point out that attacking the
person does not harm the idea and steer the discussion back to the
facts.
If you want to make better decisions, reject hasty generalizations.
Watch out for others jumping to conclusions that are not justified.
Make sure they specify any qualifications. For example, a source
may tell you that mobile advertising always generates revenue. Can
this be true? There are probably some hidden qualifications here;
perhaps they mean that mobile advertising usually generates
revenue when targeted at the right customers. Note the change from
‘always’ to ‘usually’: absolute words like ‘always’ can cue you to
other people’s over-generalizations.
Avoiding the bandwagon fallacy appears easy, but it does involve
more work than simply accepting what you see or hear, like all of our
critical thinking principles. Be alert and process the information
actively, not passively. Remain open to alternative information and
solutions, embrace alternative perspectives, and realize that the
majority can easily be wrong. Keep scanning for new information,
see information and evidence in context, and not be tempted to over-
simplify.
Remember that the bandwagon fallacy, and many of those
discussed here, result from mental shortcuts. A mindful approach
helps to compensate for this and can be extremely helpful [1,26].
The straw man fallacy is fairly easy to recognize. Be alert to the
speaker’s arguments or claims. Watch out for somebody restating an
argument in their own words. Have they added or omitted anything?
Have they changed the argument?
Combat the influence of the availability heuristic and confirmation
bias by going beyond your first thoughts and encouraging others to
do so as well. Acknowledge that your initial idea could be correct, but
search for evidence that disproves it. Keep multiple possibilities in
mind. This gives you a firmer foundation going forward.
When dealing with numerical data, watch out for anchoring effects.
Ensure you have enough time to perform calculations in full to avoid
mistakenly anchoring your final answer to an interim solution.
Be aware that completely unrelated values can easily anchor
numerical estimates. Moreover, people and other sources may
intentionally attempt to anchor your responses, numerical or
otherwise. A mindful approach helps in these situations, and you
could even try to re-anchor your estimates. For example, in a
financial negotiation where the other party has suggested an initial
figure, you could contemplate a very different figure (even if it is only
in your mind) to compensate for the possible anchoring effect.
Anchoring may explain over-optimism in complex projects as we
may overestimate our chances of success based on success in the
early stages. Accept that your best estimate may still be wrong, and
follow a process of critical thinking by assessing new information and
evidence in full and integrating it into your ongoing projects.
False consensus affects how we perceive other people and their
opinions and how they perceive us. Try to avoid making assumptions
about other people, and if others make incorrect assumptions about
you, point it out politely.
In the professional world, the false consensus at an organizational
level could lead to an array of problems. Suppose managers at a
company assume that their competitor companies all work in the
same way as their own. In that case, they could miss innovative
opportunities by not absorbing different ways of working. Conversely,
they may not realize when they have a competitive advantage they
could exploit. It is worth taking the time to investigate the facts of the
matter at hand.
Overcoming the halo effect means being objective in our judgments.
Treat separate elements as separate elements: for example, a
beautifully painted scene on the side of an old, rusty car should not
(of course) make you think it is a good car. Be aware that a good
experience of something has a lot of influence, sometimes more than
it should. Remember not to let the halo effect blind you to things (or
people) becoming worse over time. Assess things individually, on
their own merits.
The availability heuristic could be particularly problematic for critical
thinking. When we try to think rationally, we must go beyond the
obvious and examine situations in detail. The availability heuristic
pushes us in the opposite direction, but we can push back. For
example, if you have to make a difficult decision or judgment call,
write a long list of pros and cons. This will help you focus on the
whole situation rather than allowing the most available information to
hijack your decision-making.
The representativeness heuristic can be tricky to address because
people are so confident in their judgments. To prevent yourself from
falling into it, find out the base rate of whatever you are judging. In
the example given earlier, the speaker judged someone to be a
computer scientist rather than a farmer because he wore glasses. A
more reliable way to decide would be to look at what percentage of
people work as farmers and computer scientists and then choose the
most common.
In general, finding out the base rate or baseline figures is an
extremely useful way of dodging the representativeness heuristic
when judging which category belongs. When working with
processes, you can gather more data or repeat a process several
times and observe the outcomes: a larger sample size is more likely
to give you a truly representative result.

Why You Should Never Be Afraid To Change Your Mind

The biases and heuristics discussed here make up a tiny fraction of
those that philosophers, psychologists, and economists reckon our
brains work with. Remembering that these are a natural feature of
how our minds work and can be somewhat automatic, we need to
challenge beliefs and ways of thinking without feeling threatened or
making others feel threatened.
In logic, true premises and valid logic lead to a true conclusion. If the
‘facts’ are wrong, the argument is not valid. The conclusion may still
be true by coincidence, but the argument given does not justify that
conclusion. All the factors listed in this chapter, and many more, can
lead us to misapprehend the facts.
An argument’s premises may even be assumptions rather than facts,
but this results in a weaker argument. An assumption is something
presented as factual but without evidence. Sometimes assumptions
are the best we can get in a given situation. For example, there are
times when we simply cannot find any evidence one way or the
other. Scientists and other innovators run into this issue fairly often.
Even so, you should have less confidence in a conclusion derived
from assumptions and gather evidence to support or reject the
assumptions where possible.
Psychologists first defined the term ‘cognitive dissonance’ in the
1970s [36]. It has been a popular idea ever since and has gained
general acceptance [37]. When we come across new information that
does not fit our current idea or conclusion, our brains work to make it
fit or reject the new information.
When contradicting beliefs lead to cognitive dissonance, our minds
may try to hold on to both beliefs by compartmentalizing them; our
minds keep the beliefs apart. We do not suffer from the conflict and
therefore ignore it [1]. Instead, try inspecting the beliefs and see
whether one or both need to be updated based on additional
evidence.
Note that cognitive dissonance is a rationalizing process. Our brains
find it hard to hold contradictory information, so facts may get
distorted or ignored in the effort to return to a state of equilibrium.
When working things out for yourself, reduce dissonance by focusing
on the process of logic rather than the conclusion [12]. Make sure the
logic is sound. As long as all the premises are true and the
conclusion follows from the premises, you can accept the conclusion
that emerges from your reasoning process.
A further psychological trait that makes people susceptible to biases
is that we have fairly poor intuitive math skills. Even those with good
academic and professional math skills do not always apply them in
everyday reasoning [12, 17].
For instance, imagine a lottery that draws five numbers from a pool
of fifty. One week, the winning numbers come out as 1, 2, 3, 4, and
5. What is your first reaction to that result? Highly improbable, some
people would say. Perhaps so improbable that it suggests cheating.
These lottery numbers are just as likely as any other combination of
five numbers drawn randomly from a set. They do not represent
random numbers very well; people expect to see numbers scattered
across the range. It would be far more surprising if the same set of
numbers - any numbers - came up three weeks in a row.
In conclusion, you should never be afraid of new information and of
changing your mind. Be open-minded, allow growth in yourself,
account for all the factors discussed here, and share your critical
thinking skills with friends and colleagues.

Other Cognitive Factors That Affect Our Thinking

In addition to the factors already discussed, other features of our
cognitive system and the information itself can affect our thinking.

Pattern Recognition
Our brains are incredibly good at recognizing patterns. People often
perceive faces in facelike configurations, like the Man in the Moon,
known as visual pareidolia. A large area of our visual brain is
dedicated to face processing, so it is not surprising that we perceive
them even when they are not there [12].
Pareidolia is automatic: people do not try to see these patterns; they
just do [2]. You have almost certainly had this experience. Countless
internet memes show objects like houses and cars that look like
faces. Sometimes it can take a few moments for the pattern to
resolve itself into the image. Still, other times it strikes you straight
away, and it is difficult or impossible to go back to see the image as a
less meaningful pattern.
Pareidolia can occur in other senses: hearing Satanic messages in
music played backward or ghostly voices in radio static.
Automatic pattern perception illustrates similar tendencies to optical
illusions, like flat images that appear three-dimensional. These are
not just fun and games. Both pattern recognition and false
perceptions could lead to false beliefs, and people can and do seek
information to support them.
In summary, our brains are incredibly good at recognizing patterns
yet poor at statistics [12]. We regularly perceive meaning in random
stimuli.

Missing And Hidden Data

Information you are not aware of sometimes affects whatever you
are trying to reason about. The danger is that missing data could be
crucial; if you had it, your conclusion or decision might be completely
different.
In medical trials, missing data is common. For example, in a study of
patients who have had a stroke, clinicians might not be able to get
data for all their research questions from all the patients. Some
would be unable to complete certain tasks, whereas others would.
One way to account for this is to use statistics to fill in the gaps, such
as replacing missing data points with all the other patients [38].
Researchers plan their clinical trials in great detail, usually building in
methods to compensate for missing data. You could consider doing
this for your projects where applicable: plan how to compensate for
unobtainable data.
Additionally, hidden information might result from confirmation bias
when people ignore or fail to report occurrences that disprove an
idea [2]. Discovering these occurrences is vital if we want to undo the
confirmation bias.

Regression To The Mean And The Hot Hand

Although this is not a math test, you should be aware of regression
to the mean. This is neither a fallacy nor a bias but a characteristic of
data. Regression to the mean occurs when somebody repeatedly
takes a test or performs a task. A very high or low score, an outlier,
may occur, but then the data goes back towards the previous
average [1,12,17].
This phenomenon explains why a great year for a sports team is
more likely to be followed by a worse year than by another great
year. Performance improvements can and do occur, but we cannot
judge a single great year as though it reflected an average
improvement. Excellent performance is a combination of baseline
ability and random good luck [12].
Regression to the mean can have interesting effects in the real
world. One scientist worked with military flight instructors, one of
whom reported that when he praised a cadet’s performance, they
usually did worse the next time [16]. The instructor thought that praise
made people worse at flying airplanes. However, their particularly
good flight was an outlier, resulting in the cadet regressing the mean
on their next performance.
Similarly, extremely poor performance is more likely to be followed
by an average performance than by another dismal one.
Generally, we have low awareness of the regression to the mean
effect because we fail to account for chance as much as perhaps we
should. Regression to the mean also feeds into some of the biases
and heuristics already discussed [17]. The next fallacy illustrates a
similar point.
The hot hand fallacy is the belief that following good performance;
subsequent attempts will also be successful. Commentary on team
sports like basketball sometimes cites this fallacy [2].
It is related to regression to the mean: regression to the mean is the
real situation, whereas the hot hand fallacy is what people think will
happen. It is also related to confirmation bias: people notice when
the hot hand effect happens but do not notice when it does not [2].
The Hot Hand fallacy can also apply to casino games, which players
sometimes perceive as non-random. Casino players exhibit the
opposite fallacy: the gambler's fallacy that because they have lost
many times, a win is due [39].
These gamblers’ fallacies suggest that even when a random chance
is the main factor affecting the outcome, people persist in perceiving
patterns. Imagine what our brains might be doing when it is not so
obvious that chance determines the outcome!

Action Steps
Our brains do a great deal of information processing that we are not
always aware of. We are quite fortunate to have all these short-cuts
making processing more efficient. Try these suggested exercises to
explore these ideas further before we move on.
1. Fantastic Fallacies, And Where To Find Them
Find a list of fallacies, biases, and heuristics in an online
encyclopedia or psychology website. See how many there are?
Read some of them and make a note of your thoughts. You could
look at things like:

Which ones might people be unaware of when they encounter

them?
Are they rhetorical devices used deliberately to persuade? Or
are they quite automatic?
Are they related to those we have talked about?
Can you think of examples from the media or from your own
life that fit the definitions?
How might you combat these in your own or others’ thinking?
2. Un-attacking The Person
Find an argument, such as a transcript of a debate, in which
someone uses the ad hominem or straw man fallacy deliberately to
divert the debate. Rewrite it (or part of it), staying focussed on the
actual topic. Compare your version to the original, perhaps show it to
a colleague or friend, and think about which version reaches a more
logical outcome.

Summary
At the beginning of this chapter, the story illustrates that sometimes
we get it wrong; sometimes, this applies even when we exercise
good critical thinking skills. Our cognitive processes may be
sophisticated, but they are also economical. In the story, the parents
believed they were benefiting their son by playing Mozart because
they believed the high-profile research paper suggesting that Mozart
made people more intelligent.
The parents only read the initial research study on the Mozart Effect.
They did not follow it up: hasty generalization. They did not realize
that other scientists had found it so hard to replicate the Mozart
Effect. They fell into confirmation bias by only noticing media reports
praising (and confirming) the Mozart Effect.
The halo effect may have operated too because Mozart is generally
accepted as one of the best classical composers. If it had been an
obscure composer, would the paper have gained such a high profile?
The population found it easy to fall in love with the idea that Mozart's
music was special in yet another way.
Nor were the parents skeptical; if they had been, they would have
researched the effect for themselves rather than taking it at face
value. Scientists aim to be skeptical at all stages of their workflow,
from ideas to analyzing the data from completed research. The next
chapter elucidates scientific skepticism in greater detail.
Takeaways
1. Our minds abound with fallacies, beliefs, emotions, biases, and
heuristics, all of which impact our perceptions and how we process
information.
2. These can have massive effects, so we need to remove their
effects if we want to reach solid conclusions and make good
decisions.
3. It may not be possible to overcome these biases induced by our
minds completely, but critical thinking can help.
 3

WHY HAVING A SCIENTIFICALLY SKEPTICAL MIND

HELPS YOU DISCOVER THE TRUTH

F ifteen-year-old
in her hands.
Alanna Thomas burst into tears and buried her face

“I’m so sorry,” she gasped. She looked up at the police officer

standing over her. “I did it, I did… I pushed him off. I’m sorry...”
On the other side of town, local journalist Lin Rodriguez also buried
her head in her hands. She needed to get this article finished, but
the story was so complex. It was hard to know what was real.
Two weeks prior, Mr. Gomez, a science teacher at Mildenhall High
School, was floating face-up in a flooded disused quarry. Lin
remembered his classes. He was strict but somehow still inspiring.
She would never have studied forensic sciences at College if it were
not for Mr. Gomez.
Not everyone had liked him at high school, but Lin could not imagine
why this local academic had fallen to such a violent death. Events
like this did not happen in their small town; the community was in
shock. Naturally, the rumors began as soon as the news broke.
Murder? Suicide? Misadventure? Nobody knew, but everybody was
talking about it.
Lin’s boss sent her to the scene as soon as he heard, and she
interviewed the forensics team as they painstakingly collected
evidence. They had covered the body, but the lead investigator told
Lin that Mr. Gomez had some suspicious bruises. They found two
different sets of footprints around the top of the cliff too.
The next day, further evidence came to light. A local man told police
he was walking his dog in the area the previous night and had heard
somebody making their way through the undergrowth not far from
the cliff. The area was overgrown with brambles, and he could hear
they were having some difficulty. He reckoned this was not long after
Mr. Gomez had his lethal fall.
Lin asked around to find out who might know more. If it was suicide,
perhaps Mr. Gomez had expressed sadness or pain in the days and
weeks before his death. She questioned colleagues at school and
heard a few interesting morsels of information.
Four separate people highlighted the same concern: a small group of
students appeared to have a rather nasty grudge against this
particular teacher. They even reported social media threads detailing
certain students’ fantasies about playing nasty tricks on him, like
keying his car or even harming him personally. These groups
consisted of students the other teachers agreed were outcasts. One
of the students was Alanna Thomas, a shy girl who was a local
attorney’s daughter.
Lin investigated the social media posts and found several distressing
threads. Sure enough, ‘let’s kill Mr. Gomez’ came up more than
once.
The problem was, Lin just could not believe that any of these
disaffected children would murder their teacher. Priding herself on
her skepticism, she looked for and found an alternative explanation.
Alanna Thomas’ father was aiming for a promotion: he wanted to
become a district attorney. Furthermore, a group of powerful local
business owners was firmly against this idea. Mr. Thomas was a
keen environmentalist, and everybody expected his appointment to
scupper their plans to build a large power plant on the edge of
Mildenhall. Instead of an angry schoolgirl, it was surely more likely
that somebody had hired a professional killer to neutralize Mr.
Thomas by implicating his daughter in a murder case.
Besides, the child was the perfect stooge. She was known to hold a
grudge against her teacher and be a social misfit who would crumble
under police questioning.
As we have seen, that is exactly what happened. Alanna’s tearful
confession formed the backbone of the case against her. She was
easily tall and strong enough to have pushed Mr. Gomez off the cliff
while he was out walking his dog at night, a habit which the whole
town knew about.
Lin published her investigation. Following Lin’s article, the police
dropped their case due to a lack of evidence. Officially, they
concluded that Alanna’s confession was unreliable and that there
was not enough evidence. Mr. Gomez had fallen into the quarry; it
was a terrible accident.
On the same day, Lin received an anonymous email. It said:
“You should have listened. Gomez was murdered.”
The sender attached a high-resolution photograph taken from the top
of the cliff. The time and date were exactly right, and so was the
location data. The image showed Alanna Thomas standing at the
edge and down below the body of a man face down in the water.
If Lin had been properly skeptical throughout her investigation, she
would not have suffered these dire consequences. She doubted the
first explanation–that Alanna had killed her teacher–so much that
she came up with an even less plausible alternative. She convinced
herself and others that it was true, even though her conspiracy
theory had less evidence to support it than the police’s theory.
Ultimately, the truth eluded everybody.
Skepticism is not simple cynicism. Skeptics keep an open mind,
doubting every explanation rather than believing they have arrived at
a final answer. Taking a skeptical approach based on scientific
principles helps us get closer to true conclusions rather than settling
for what we want to be true [1]. Critical thinkers can guard
themselves against being misled into believing lies or mistaken
information.

What Is Scientific Skepticism?

In general usage, skepticism refers to an attitude of doubt. Skeptics
in the media often criticize ideas they see as unlikely, such as alien
abductions or conspiracy theories. Scientific skeptics are prepared
either to believe or disbelieve claims, depending on a fair analysis of
the evidence.
Scientists, as natural skeptics, spend many years gathering
evidence before publishing their findings. What is more, scientists
never claim to discover the truth; they just update the current
understanding. There is no end to scientific inquiry.
You can only apply a scientifically skeptical approach to claims that
are verifiable and falsifiable. ‘Verifiable’ means that you can test the
concept or claim [40]. In the early 20th century, European
philosophers spent a lot of time thrashing out what verifiability
means. Something is verifiable if you can find out that it is true by
observing or measuring it. Some philosophers include logical
verification within this definition, but scientists prefer to focus on
claims that they can test in the real world. These include whether
tooth decay predicts tooth loss or whether investing in education
correlates with an improved local economy. Science focuses on
things we can measure, usually quantitatively.
To be clear, you do not have to prove the idea for it to be verifiable.
For example, we can say that life may be discovered in other solar
systems in the future, although we do not possess many methods for
doing so at the moment. This claim is verifiable because we would
be able to travel there in the future and observe whether life exists or
not. Current science measures planetary environments by using
telescopes to detect atmospheric chemistry, which can reveal life
conditions and may reveal chemical signatures of life [41].
An example of an unverifiable claim might be: ‘a child once
swallowed a whole bicycle wheel and survived.’ We cannot verify
this because we do not have the information to identify the child.
Anecdotal reports like this may simply be mistakes or deceptions.
Even if the source is reliable, they may pass on unreliable
information, so you should be particularly skeptical about second-
hand evidence [2].
Claims that we cannot verify are, therefore, not scientific. Instead, we
can call them ‘metaphysical’ in the case of faith-based claims [42,43]
or refer to them as beliefs or unverified claims. The problem with
verification is that it is not often that we can 100% verify anything [43].
That is why falsifiability is so important and has somewhat eclipsed
the concept of verifiability in recent decades.
Falsifiability means that it is possible to disprove a claim or proposal
[44]. For instance, if somebody stated that Robert de Niro was born in

New Zealand, you could falsify the statement by obtaining evidence

from birth records.
This criterion is more powerful than the verifiability criterion because
it is easier to find ways to disprove claims than prove them.
Falsification is the usual principle for modern scientific research:
scientists, rather than trying to prove something, try to reject its
opposite. Falsifiability also helps scientists to maintain objectivity
while conducting and analyzing research.
Scientists engage in two broad types of research: observation and
experiment. Both of these have their merits and can be used to
investigate claims. Observational studies are excellent for gathering
initial evidence on a topic. In an observational study, the scientists do
not alter anything about the situation they are studying. They simply
record data and categorize it to see whether two or more situations
differ.
For example, a psychologist might think that women spend more
money on sun protection cream than men in hot weather. To conduct
a study on this topic, they would compare sun cream sales between
men and women across various temperatures.
However, they are not trying to verify their idea that women spend
more on sun cream. They would be testing the idea that sales were
no different to see whether they could falsify it. If the money spent
was different, they could conclude that perhaps they were right and
do more studies. If the money spent were no different, they would
have to accept that result. Perhaps women and men do not differ in
reality, or perhaps some study aspect affected the results.
Observational studies can be very informative, but experimental
studies are more powerful. In an experiment, the scientist controls as
many variables as possible, aiming to keep everything equal except
the variable of interest.
As an example, you might want to design an experiment to see
whether giving salespeople bonuses led to more sales in the
following year. To do this, you would have to give some people a
bonus and others no bonus and measure their performance.
(Perhaps you could give the non-bonus group a bonus later on).
Another key scientific principle is replicability. Do we find the same
result when we repeat the same research? If a research result is a
one-off, it is not reliable. The idea that listening to Mozart made
people more intelligent was difficult to replicate [8], even though one
study had found this result [9].
One difficulty with adopting a scientific approach is that people tend
to prefer positive results. We prefer to draw conclusions based on
events instead of non-events, reflecting our preference for
meaningfulness over randomness [2]. Sometimes, people like a
scientific result so much that they ignore other results that falsify it,
much like confirmation bias [1, 10].
Science uses observation and measurement; therefore it mostly
uses inductive rather than deductive reasoning.
Deductive reasoning is when you argue from the general case to the
specific case. If all penguins can swim, and Benjamin is a penguin, it
follows that Benjamin can swim.
Inductive reasoning flows in the opposite direction. You argue from
the specific to the general case. If every penguin you see is black
and white, you conclude that all penguins are black and white.
Seeing a single blue penguin falsifies the statement.
In the penguin example given above, seeing a blue penguin would
force us to change our conclusion to ‘most penguins are black and
white, and some are blue,’ which would be acceptable until we get
further information. Perhaps somebody discovers a new location
filled with blue penguins, tipping the balance so that we change our
conclusion again, now stating that ‘most penguins are blue.’
Claims based on faith fall outside the domain of science because
they are neither verifiable, nor falsifiable. This does not mean they
are false, simply that we cannot investigate them using the scientific
method. We cannot label religious beliefs as true or false.
Scientific anomalies like dark matter and dark energy are somewhat
similar in that people debate whether they exist and how to explain
to them if they do exist. However, in these cases, we can say that we
are awaiting an explanation, and scientific methods can potentially
explain them (since both matter and energy are core topics for
physics).

How Critical Thinking And Scientific Skepticism Work Together

Scientific skepticism works together with critical thinking to help us
discern truth from non-truth. The techniques of scientific inquiry
involve examining all the evidence before concluding. This process
makes us less error-prone. Neither scientists nor skeptics are
completely free of error and bias, but aim to be as objective as
possible.
As you might imagine, it is often impossible to examine all the
evidence. For example, a team of biologists cannot dissect every
single member of a certain species to examine their inner workings,
and social scientists cannot expect a 100% return rate for their
questionnaires. In these cases, scientists calculate how many
individuals’ data points are likely to give a fair representation of the
entire population, perhaps perform a smaller pilot study to check,
and use a sample of that size for their study.
When analyzing data, we have to beware of false positives and false
negatives. Like a diagnostic test for a disease, a scientific
experiment cannot be 100% accurate; chance factors can intervene
and create a rogue result that does not reflect the reality of the
situation.
A false positive result happens when an experiment randomly shows
that something does happen or does affect something else, but the
result was actually due to chance. In contrast, a false negative result
is when the effect is real but, again by chance, did not show up in the
experiment. The danger in both cases is that investigators might
accept the false result and either miss something important or
proceed to investigate something unimportant [45].
We do have ways to combat false results. We can repeat the same
experiment several times in different circumstances to examine
replicability. We can also use control conditions in experiments to
reveal what happens under slightly different circumstances [2].
Applied sciences like medical research may use placebo as a control
condition. A placebo is an inactive substance (or other types of
intervention) that resembles the active treatment enough that people
cannot tell them apart. The researchers tell participants they may
receive the placebo or the active treatment. Due to ethical concerns
around withholding something that might benefit sick people, new
treatments are often tested against the current treatment. Similar to
the example given earlier, deciding not to provide some salespeople
a bonus as part of a research study would be unfair.
Critical thinking creates a framework of doubt: like scientists, we
question things constantly and gather evidence to draw more reliable
conclusions. Like a scientist, try to avoid falling into the trap of
thinking you have discovered the absolute truth. It is better to remain
open-minded and flexible and update your current understanding by
adding new evidence as you discover it. At the same time,
remember that some theories have better logic and evidence to
support them than others [1].
If you want to judge whether a theory is a good scientific theory,
apply the following principles:
Falsifiability: recall that claims that we cannot disprove are not
scientific, and we should label them as beliefs or assumptions rather
than theories.
Occam’s razor: if we have two or more competing theories, we
should use the simplest one (until we have more evidence). Some
thinkers state this as accepting the theory that forces us to make the
fewest assumptions. Also, theories should not contain extra
elements that make no difference to the whole [2].
Explanatory power: a good theory should adequately explain its
subject better than competing theories. New evidence can render it a
better or worse fit for the data. A theory can also be thrown out in the
light of new evidence, in which case its explanatory power drops to
zero [46].
Predictive power: this to the theory’s ability to generate testable
predictions. For instance, in chemistry, the periodic table of the
elements predicted elements that did not exist yet, which scientists
then discovered or made in the lab. Similarly, Darwin predicted a
pollinating moth for a specifically shaped flower, and botanists later
discovered a moth that fit his prediction [47].
To illustrate these points, imagine a friend telling you this tale:
“My Grandad's liver held out until he was ninety-six years old,
despite drinking a bottle of whisky every day of his life!”
Unfortunately, Grandad does not prove that alcohol is fine for your
liver. This idea is falsifiable if you look at the whole population of
drinkers; Grandad was atypical. This story also illustrates
confirmation bias, as though a single example outweighed decades
of medical fact. Occam’s razor tells us that Grandad is the exception.
His good luck does not bode well for other heavy drinkers: your
friend’s theory has low explanatory and predictive power.
With so many considerations at play, we need to continue to be
skeptical of conclusions even when we feel confident. This does not
mean we should doubt others or ourselves to excess, only that we
should remain open to changing our minds.

Why We Need To Be Skeptical

One theory states that our minds are hardwired to make decisions,
and once we decide, we are reluctant to change our minds. This is
because we have two different ‘actors’ or systems within our minds
that process information. We can call these the fast system and the
slow system [11].
Have you ever wondered why some experts seem to be able to
make decisions and solve problems instantly? One explanation for
expertise is that well-studied skills become virtually automatic with
practice. This includes thinking as well as physical skills. These rapid
mental actions use the fast system, which also deals with
recognizing emotions from people’s voices and automatic reading of
whole words in fluent readers.
The slow system does deliberate thinking, such as when we have to
do a difficult calculation. You may observe your mind needed to
concentrate, effortfully retrieving information from memory, and
working through the problem in sequential stages. This system is
highly affected by distractions, which is why sometimes you might
find yourself concentrating so hard that somebody has to say your
name several times to get your attention.
The fast and slow systems work together, too. The fast system
recruits the slow system to help with difficult tasks, and sometimes
we all experience the conflict between automatic and effortful
processing. One example could be resisting the urge to criticize
somebody if you get angry: the fast system drives the hot-headed
emotional behavior, but the slow system keeps it in check.
Like skills, prior beliefs, and things we think we know can become
automatic, almost like mental reflexes. If we want to overcome them,
we need to make a significant effort, and even then, the automatic
‘gut reaction’ can remain.
That is why we need to continue to be skeptical of our conclusions
even when we are confident. We must be wary of our mind’s flaws,
including tendencies like being overly influenced by other people and
our own emotions and prior beliefs, and our inherent biases and the
brain’s preference for taking shortcuts.
However, the good news is that we can change our cognitive habits
through practice. We can even see changes in the brain with
practice. Neuroplasticity means that our brains can reorganize
themselves quite extensively, and this is not only the case for
younger people whose brains are still maturing. ‘Map reorganization’
in the brain is particularly interesting. Research shows that learning
and practicing skills lead to growth in related brain areas, whereas
dropping the practice leads these areas to shrink back towards their
baseline size [48].
It can be difficult to challenge other peoples’ reluctance to change
their minds. Throwing a lot of facts and evidence at them may only
make things worse. Instead, while maintaining awareness of any
cultural and social factors that might be feeding into their opinions,
try coaxing them to consciously think about their attitudes (use the
slow system of thought) and remind them why evidence is important
[49].

It may sound contradictory, but we need both skepticism and open-

mindedness [50,51]. We can define open-mindedness as a set of
mental habits:

Thinking flexibly and avoiding rigidity.

Accepting views that may contradict each other, at least until
you have evaluated them.
Avoiding getting blinkered by your own beliefs.
Striving to avoid bias even when you disagree with a claim.
Being willing to explore new ideas.

To some people, these ways of thinking may seem incompatible with

skepticism. Certainly, the everyday definition of skepticism focuses
more on being critical and challenging ideas than being open to
them. A skeptical person may appear to be closed to new ideas until
they obtain further evidence, in contrast to the open-minded stance
portrayed above. But recall that a key part of skepticism is being
open to changing your position and seeing other perspectives.
Opponents of a skeptical approach may argue that skepticism is
paradoxical because skepticism itself is a belief system . These
opponents argue that skeptics use ad hominem, straw men, and
similar techniques to discredit potential miracle discoveries [50,52].
However, true skeptics take a balanced view and are always open to
the idea they might be wrong. ‘Pseudo-skeptics’ are those people
who almost exclusively disbelieve and deny claims; they are similar
to ‘debunkers’ whose mission is to try to disprove claims [52].
To summarize, think of skepticism and open-mindedness as two
complementary aspects of the same process: critical thinking. They
are not incompatible. Note that an open-minded attitude allows you
to salvage the good parts of bad ideas, whereas a strict skeptic
would throw everything out. Open-mindedness is a key part of
creativity and innovation.

Lucidity And Metacognition

Lucidity is an open-minded state where we can see past our prior
beliefs and perceive reality as it is. This is a great state to aim for if
you want to appreciate new information fully.
People have an inbuilt immunity to new ideas and prefer to stick with
what they know. People may even perceive new ideas as
threatening, making a kind of automatic assumption that they already
believe must be better than the novel claim. That is why discovering
the true cause or process of something is only the first step.
Scientists must then continue to investigate and try to convince
others that their theory is correct [53]. At the same time, they must
maintain a skeptical viewpoint, acknowledging that they might be
wrong.
People have trouble with new ideas, particularly new scientific ideas,
for a few reasons. Firstly, the true causes of phenomena are not
usually simple or obvious. Secondly, people often get the causes
wrong when considering things they feel strongly about. Thirdly, it is
difficult to discover how to get to the correct explanations (that is why
science is always seeking to improve scientific methods and
knowledge). Fourthly, people need to be continuously motivated to
discover the real causes and, subsequently, to promote novel
explanations [53]. You can see why scientists are such busy people.
Evidence shows that high critical thinking skills are associated with
high metacognitive awareness [54]. Metacognitive awareness means
having awareness and control over how you process information; it
is a self-reflective process, known as ‘thinking about thinking’ [55].
We can use metacognition to guide our own learning, development,
and decision-making. People with high metacognitive awareness
have excellent knowledge about their own cognitive processes and
their outcomes. Like critical thinking, metacognition is teachable and
can improve with practice [56]. For example:
John knows he has a poor prospective memory - he always forgets
to do things he has said he will do. His family and colleagues often
get irate about this. However, John has excellent metacognitive
skills: he knows his memory is poor, enabling him to do something
about it. He trains his memory by setting reminders and writing task
lists. After a while, he does not need to set reminders anymore; he
goes straight to the lists.
You can imagine that somebody with poor metacognitive skills might
not have been as successful. John was not afraid to admit he had a
minor memory problem and was able to solve it.
Interestingly, student teachers with more experience showed higher
metacognitive awareness and critical thinking skills (assessed by
questionnaire) [54]. This was a correlation, so we do not know
whether metacognition causes critical thinking or the other way
round; alternatively, they may draw on the same underlying skills and
habits. Since critical thinking means deliberately using sophisticated
thinking skills to solve problems, going beyond intuition, and using
high-level analytical skills, it seems reasonable to suppose that it
relates to metacognition.

Paul and Elder [57] describe nine intellectual standards that should
help us think both lucidly and metacognitively about ideas. These are
standards that scientists strive to meet in their communications, and
they give you a helpful framework whether you are composing an
argument or receiving one from another source:
Clarity: to reason about a claim, we must be clear about what they
mean. Therefore, when you are communicating, you need to aim for
maximum clarity as well. This standard is a prerequisite for all the
other standards.
Accuracy: you may not have access to resources to check the
accuracy of all points made, but you can assess it by thinking about
whether the claim is verifiable and whether the source is trustworthy.
Precision: information should be appropriately precise for the point
under discussion. A claim could be accurate but imprecise; for
example, ‘the company’s profits fell last year’ is less precise than
saying they fell by 18% last financial year.
Relevance: we might reason clearly, accurately, and precisely, but
this is pointless if we deviate from the core topic.
Depth: this means dealing with the complexities and relationships of
the concept under discussion rather than over-simplifying it.
Breadth: this means taking in multiple (relevant) points of view and
recognizing alternative perspectives on the issue. For example,
business strategies often look at environmental, ethical, and social
concerns, as well as economic factors
Logic: this means ensuring that the arguments work logically: does
the evidence lead to the conclusion, and does the argument have
internal consistency?
Significance: this is related to relevance, but sometimes relevant
points are trivial. We need to ensure that our reasoning focuses on
the important aspects of the problem.
Fairness: our reasoning should be bias-free and honest. We should
aim not to argue only for our own interests. Others may interpret
unfair arguments as attempts to manipulate and deceive them.
Hopefully, you can see how these standards relate to scientific
skepticism and communication. All of these standards apply to
science but also our everyday lives, both work-related and personal
problems. Therefore they are useful to remember when composing
or reading claims and other communications.

Looking Beyond Our Prior Learning

Scientific skepticism is not always easy. We can only reach the truth
if we work hard to see past the received wisdom and assumptions
that society taught us in our youth.
The postmodern view says that truth is not absolute but subjective.
Declarations are therefore always up for debate. As any scientist or
critical thinker will tell you, all we have is our best current
understanding. Truth is constantly evolving in the light of new
evidence. Postmodernism goes much further than this.
Postmodernism is not a single theory but a way of looking at things.
Scholars have applied it to many different domains, mainly literature,
the arts, theology, and philosophy [58]. However, here we are
concerned with scientific skepticism and how to get to the truth,
focusing on postmodern views of science and philosophy.
Postmodernism consists of the following key ideas [59]:

1. There is no objective reality outside of human experience.

2. Scientific and historical 'facts', therefore, cannot be true or false
because humans concocted the very idea of reality.
3. Science and technology cannot change human existence for the
better. (Some postmodernists believe science is a dark force rather
than a way of humanity progressing).
4. Reason and logic are not universal; they are only valid in their own
domains.
5. All (or nearly all) human nature is socially acquired rather than
hard-wired.
6. Human language does not reflect reality directly; instead, it is
completely fluid and only reflects how people refer to things within
their own cultural and historical context.
7. We cannot gain knowledge about reality, and nor can we back up
our knowledge using evidence or logic.
8. We cannot formulate grand theories that explain wide-ranging
phenomena; postmodernists believe these are a kind of
totalitarianism that disallows other views.
As you can see, postmodernism contains some useful ideas.
However, it is difficult to take a completely postmodernist view and
still expect to explain anything or figure anything out. You could say
that postmodernism fails to explain anything but at the same time,
claims to offer an alternative to traditional scientific methods.
Paradoxically, postmodernism decries grand theories but is itself a
grand theory [58].
Postmodernism was most popular in the mid to late 20th century,
particularly the 1990s, when academics collectively published over
100 articles per year [58]. The postmodern movement provoked a
great deal of popular debate. Critics of the approach say that it
encourages people to think of science as no more useful than
pseudosciences like astrology [59]. (Although we know that scientific
good theories predict future events, astrology does not have this
power.
Some postmodern ideas support skepticism and open-mindedness,
but its core suggests that we can never discover anything because
reality does not exist. Mainstream scientists and philosophers alike
seem to have more faith that we can discover the truth, but
postmodern attitudes persist [60]. On the other hand, postmodernism
does encourage us to take a broader view of ideas and look beyond
traditional categories, so it is similar to the idea of scientific
skepticism (even though postmodernism is skeptical of science!).

Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn was a philosopher and scientist who wrote about how
science moves forward. His work heavily influenced the postmodern
view, but he did not argue that science is anti-progress. Instead, he
said that we do ‘normal science,' and knowledge moves forward in
jumps, which he called paradigm shifts. ‘Paradigm’ refers to the
prevailing world view or scientific approach of its time. For example,
history saw a great paradigm shift away from classical Newtonian
physics when Einstein advanced his theory of relativity [ 1,61].
Normal science is an incremental process. Small advances taken
together, debated by scientists in journals and conferences,
gradually increase knowledge. Scientists predict many discoveries in
advance during normal science, based on theories that they believe
have solid foundations. Education imparts received wisdom to
budding scientists, and they become fluent in its specific methods
and language and continue research along the established lines.
A paradigm shift results from a crisis in science. The existing theory
can no longer explain observations, or a radical new theory gets
proposed that explains things better than the old one.
Examples of paradigm shifts in science:
1. Copernicus’ proposal that the Sun, rather than the Earth, lay at the
center of the Solar System.
2. Lavoisier’s discovery that chemical elements combined to make
molecules with various properties, superseding alchemical views of
chemistry.
3. In the 1880s, the ‘germ theory’ that tiny organisms (rather than
bad air) caused diseases.
A paradigm shift means a change in what scientists study and how
they study it, and how society views that topic, what methods we use
to investigate it, and what conclusions are acceptable. These are
huge shifts, hence the alternative term: scientific revolution.
So what fuels paradigm shifts? There are three major influences.
Firstly, anomalies. Scientific anomalies happen when scientists find
things they cannot explain. If enough of these happen, a new idea
could gain momentum and lead to fundamental changes (a paradigm
shift). Small anomalies may occur in science all the time, but nobody
is looking for them to not be perceived or recorded.
Secondly, new technology (ways of measuring things) can fuel
paradigm shifts. For example, medical imaging techniques to
psychological sciences led to the new field of functional brain
imaging in the early 21st century.
Finally, when a new paradigm appears, scientists need to compare
the new and old paradigms with each other and with observations.
Some may be looking to verify the new paradigm and falsify the old
one; others will do the opposite. Everybody works to find out which
theory fits the facts better. They do 'extraordinary science' to see
what is going on and rewrite the textbooks. Extraordinary science
helps to complete the paradigm shift from old to new.
So what happens afterward? We might casually call outdated
science incorrect, but it was fine in its own time. Outdated science
took steps toward the truth, and the new science grew out of the old.
The discoveries made might still stand but get interpreted differently
under the new paradigm.
Science keeps going between paradigm shifts because people like
to solve problems. Even if the progress is slow and piecemeal, new
research is important. Scientists may work within the established
boundaries or try to push things forward slightly all the time. As long
as their approach is similar enough to their contemporaries, their
results comprise mainstream science.
Kuhn’s critics proposed that science does progress between the
paradigm shifts. For example, Einstein’s theory of general relativity
began as a theoretical description. Later, other scientists found
empirical evidence and general relativity led to a wealth of
knowledge and technology that we would not have had otherwise.
Where postmodernism gets interesting is in its applications to real-
world settings like management and education. A postmodern
approach in these areas fosters an open-minded attitude: if the
establishment is no more correct than anybody else, everybody's
ideas are potentially valuable. If there is no objective truth, a new
business process or teaching technique is never guaranteed to
succeed, nor is it guaranteed to fail [58]. That is quite liberating.

Action Steps
We have examined scientific skepticism in detail, with the aim of
helping us get to the truth. Why not have a go at these optional
exercises and apply some of the ideas we have discussed?
1. Opening The Mind
Write a skeptical and open-minded proposition or theory of your own.
It may be helpful to use something trivial for this practice exercise. It
can be as simple as ‘Why I should get my driveway resurfaced this
summer,’ or ‘An explanation of why I choose not to dye my hair.’ Use
the following helpful habits of mind [2]:
a. Gather as much evidence as possible. For instance, what is the
current state of your driveway, and what are the risks of not getting it
resurfaced?
b. Beware of false positives and false negatives in the evidence. For
example, you might read that driveway surfaces typically fail after
five years, but check who wrote this and what they base it on, and
see what other sources say.
c. Think broadly: consider everything that might possibly impact the
proposal or theory. This might include personal finances, the broader
economy, environmental concerns - whatever factors are most
relevant to your proposal.
d. Consider what somebody with the opposite opinion to yours would
write: how they would explain it and/or what they might decide. This
will help you maintain an objective perspective.
2. Metacognition Exercise
It is normal and natural to be resistant to changing our minds, but we
learned here that reflecting on our own cognitive habits can help
enhance them. Use this quick questionnaire as a self-reflection
exercise, or rate somebody who you know well. Adapted from
Snelson [53].
a. How would you rate your ability to accept any new minor idea with
a lot of evidence to support it?

I accept it immediately
I accept it after doing my own research
I need a few weeks to absorb the new idea
I do not change my mind over minor ideas

b. How would you rate your ability to accept any new major idea with
a lot of evidence to support it?

I accept it immediately
I accept it after doing my own research
I need a few weeks to absorb the new idea
I do not change my mind over major ideas

c. How would you rate your ability to accept any new revolutionary
idea with a lot of evidence to support it?

I accept it immediately
I accept it after doing my own research
I need a few weeks to absorb the new idea
I do not change my mind over revolutionary ideas

3. Standard Process
Analyze an article to check whether it meets the intellectual
standards suggested by Paul & Elder [57]. Choose something like an
editorial discussing a controversial topic. Is it:

Clear?
Accurate?
Precise?
Relevant?
Deep?
Broad?
Logical?
Significant?
Fair?

Summary
The story that began this chapter showed us that people reach faulty
conclusions even when they try to keep an open mind and discover
the truth: the police thought they had solved the crime, and Lin
thought she had found a better explanation. They were both wrong.
With a truly skeptical attitude, somebody would have doubted both
explanations, put them to one side, and investigated further. They
would have been open to alternative explanations and would not
have been averse to changing their mind even once they thought
they had the correct answer.
Scientific skepticism is not easy. It takes vigilance and discipline to
learn, but like critical thinking and other skills that we discuss here,
you can hone your skills. The processes can become more
automatic and less effortful as you develop your expertise.
Next, we will look at how to deal with claims you see in the media.
That includes social media, so it should be a great way to practice
your skeptical attitude!
Takeaways
1. When assessing claims, act like a scientist: see whether the claim
is verifiable and falsifiable. If not, perhaps somebody is asking you to
believe something without sufficient reason.
2. When making decisions and forming conclusions, keep a balance
between skepticism and open-mindedness.
3. To reach the truth, aim for lucidity. Sweep your preconceptions out
of the way and experience the world as it really is, without your
previous experience blinkering you to new facts and evidence.
4. Keep the postmodernist view in mind: perhaps we can never know
the truth, and perhaps meaning is completely relative. If that is the
case, many things are possible.
 4

WHY THE MEDIA CAN MAKE OR BREAK OUR

THINKING

Z ion Davis was sitting in his corner office early on a Friday

afternoon, signing off business expenses. So far, so normal. He
had had a long, busy week, so the routine task appealed to him. As
a manager, he was generally well-liked, not least because his civil
engineering background gave him credibility with the office staff.
As he was nearing the end of the task, an email notification pinged
onto his screen: “Interesting read.” The message was from Alaistair,
a junior team member he worked closely with, so he decided to take
a look. Almost immediately, he wished he had left it until Monday.
The email contained an attachment: the environmental report he had
been waiting for. He proposed ‘rewilding’ a section of the
development, alongside the approved construction of a visitor center
and venue for various outdoor sports activities. Alastair included a
web link which he said Zion should take a look at.
Zion clicked through. He scrolled through lengthy, emotive
paragraphs about the ‘failure’ of corporate environmental endeavors
like theirs. He sighed. This was going to take the weekend to sort
out.
Later, Zion strolled into the open-plan office Alastair and the other
juniors shared. Immediately, his team bombarded him with
questions:
“How can the company justify this?”
“This is outrageous! I can’t believe our company would do this!”
A few people argued back in favor of the company.
The conflict was not restricted to his immediate team, though: the
MD, Milton Skelpie phoned Zion, ordering him to call him in private
immediately.
“I thought we were clear. This project is over 80% ecological work
specifically to support wildlife, so why are the environmentalists up in
arms about it? And why are half of your team on their side?”
“It’s this article, Sir. They’re saying that we should leave nature to
take over by itself and that anything we do will make it worse. The
article’s bogus, Sir-”
The MD cut him off.
“Sort this out, Zion. I’m relying on you.”
Milton hung up. Zion took a deep breath, stood tall, and re-entered
the shared office. He looked around at his team.
“Everybody relax. We can tackle this together. So, we have some
problems. I’ve read this article suggesting that our wildlife park
project will harm the local environment up in Washbrook, and my
boss told me that several of you have been posting about it on social
media today. I’m going to ignore that because we have bigger
problems. As I said, we can all work together to solve this.”
The next few days were some of the most hectic and challenging
Zion had ever experienced. He delegated research tasks to several
different staff members. He asked them to research the article,
examining the platform that had published it, who had written it,
where they got their information from, articles that cited this one, the
whole gamut. He received a diverse set of reports.
Two of the staff, Meredith and Marco, had picked up one interesting
fact: the article used some of the same phrases (and misspellings)
as a blog post published towards the start of the project. A fringe
group wrote the blog, and their main purpose seemed to be to block
any kind of development. Members encouraged each other to lie and
exaggerate to get their point across; they planted misinformation to
stoke readers’ emotions and make them angry.
Zion was ready to present his findings to his superiors when the MD
visited in person, completely out of the blue.
“Zion, this is serious. The local county council is now concerned that
we misled them in our planning application. Local residents are
protesting at the site, stopping construction vehicles from entering
and chaining themselves to trees. We’ve already lost thousands
because of the delays to this project.”
Zion called Meredith and Marco into his meeting with the MD.
“Sir, I would like to introduce you to the only two people in this office
who picked up that this article is hogwash.”
They spent the next hour presenting their comprehensive, detailed
findings of the article that had caused so much trouble: the source
was not credible; the story was a distorted mishmash of second-
hand information and opinions; it played on people’s emotions; it
misrepresented the science. As Zion said, it was hogwash.
Happily, this convinced the MD. He was so impressed that he
assigned Zion and his team to write a well-researched article on the
topic for the company’s website.
After a difficult week, the project was back on track, and Zion had
gained even more respect from his team and his superiors than he
could ever have expected. Still, the fake news article had almost
caused a catastrophe.
Have you ever had an experience like this? Perhaps, or perhaps not.
The point of the story is that a lack of media literacy can have huge
potential consequences.
Several of Zion’s staff believed what they read without investigating
where the story came from; they failed to seek further information,
which led to conflict. It could even have harmed the business. Zion’s
quick, decisive action averted a potential crisis. Even better, he used
his critical thinking skills to produce a report and web article
discrediting the disparaging claims.
Also, let us not forget the councilors and local residents who also fell
for the disinformation, and the protestors who would have been
ashamed when they realized they had disrupted something that fit
with their values, rather than opposed them. Surely they would rather
have spent their time and energy protesting against something
worthwhile?

Critical Thinking And The Mass And Social Media

This chapter’s story illustrates that people vary in how much they
believe what they read in the media. Some of the characters
discovered something they found upsetting and took to social media
to spread the word. This had multiple impacts on the characters, the
corporation they worked at, and its stakeholders (local authorities
and residents), not to mention the threat to the wildlife park itself.
Today’s society relies on mass media and social media as its main
sources of information. However, the information these sources
publish is not always what it seems. Consequently, both types of
media can be harmful to people's wellbeing. Media consumers who
do not discern between truth and falsehood, either because they
decide not to or do not know how to, can ultimately suffer.
When we use the media, it is important to apply the rules of logic and
our own experience, just as in other situations. We need to read
beyond the articles themselves to understand their purposes and the
effects the authors intended to have on their readers.
The news is a great example of emotional manipulation. News
outlets use forceful language in headlines to stoke readers’
emotions, but the story is sometimes less exciting than it sounds.
Fake news overtly appeals to people’s emotions, and this is one
reason why it spreads so effectively. People tend to read fake news
in an unskeptical way, sharing it with others and thereby spreading it
further.

Big News Or Fake News?

Fake news is big news these days, but what exactly is it? Journalism
experts define fake news as news that somebody has deliberately
made up to deceive the public, instead of satirical comedy based on
news or innocent mistakes that the news media might make from
time to time. It is also not published by traditional media that adhere
to traditional standards of journalistic accuracy [62].
Therefore, instead of simply reading a message and believing it, we
should consider the source and look for alternative perspectives
elsewhere. This shifts the information we receive towards an overall
balance, and any biases will become more obvious by contrast.
Many media outlets publish in good faith; they may be politically
biased, and they may want to entertain and inform, but their news
pieces are at least based on real events. Some types of news,
however, are deliberately written to mislead and even deceive
readers.
Fakers deesign fake news to appeal to readers’ emotions and
inflame prejudices and divisions. The purpose of fake news is
usually to make money or influence political opinions. None of this is
new, but fake news really took off in the era of instant access to
news stories and social media.
So how can we spot fake news? Like online scams, fake news
websites often imitate credible sources, and creators of fake news
are getting better at making it look official [63]. One famous fake news
publication used the domain name abc.com.co, mimicking the
genuine abc.com. Fake news may also use falsified images, which
people find increasingly difficult to spot [62]. It may also feel too good
or too shocking to be true since fake news is composed to make
people feel highly emotional.

Why And How Do People Get Lured In By Fake News?

Part of the answer is other people. A large study analyzed ten years’
worth of verified true and false news stories on one famous social
media platform and found that fake news spread significantly ‘faster,
further, deeper and more broadly’ [64]. Users were more likely to
spread fake news stories than true stories, with fake stories reaching
up to 100 times as many readers. Several factors probably fed into
this.
Fake news stories were more novel and, therefore, more attention-
grabbing. People prefer to absorb novel information instead of run-
of-the-mill information, and social media may be popular because it
supplies more novel data. On social media, people interact with
unique networks of other people who supply them with both
information and entertainment. Novel information flows particularly
well on social media [65].
It might seem self-explanatory that fake news is highly novel
because it reports things that have not happened in real life.
However, the investigators controlled for novelty statistically and
concluded that this alone could not explain the viral nature of fake
news [64]. Therefore, there were other factors at play.
The same study showed that fake news elicited stronger negative
emotions - fright, sadness, and disgust - and more surprise in users,
judging by their reactions. True news stories made users express
more sadness, but also joy and trust. Surprising visual scenes attract
people’s gaze [66], as do scenes that elicit negative emotions [67], so
these factors probably enhanced attention to the fake news stories.
Additionally, people are more likely to spread misinformation if they
think it will create emotional effects. This is a powerful driver of both
the spread and persistence of fake news [68]. The social aspect of
social media is extremely powerful. For many users, the desire to
make an impression on other people is probably stronger than the
desire to communicate the truth.
Perhaps surprisingly, bots did not spread fake news any faster or
wider than they spread real news [64]. Therefore, the persistence of
the fake news stories was due to human users. Rather than sharing
true news stories, they preferred to spread things they found novel
and shocking.
A further characteristic of fake news is emotional manipulation: its
writing style and structure elicit strong emotions in response to a
particular idea and then shift readers’ responses onto another idea.
For instance, a fake news post might accuse a political party of
racism and then aim to transfer the resulting anger onto other
policies declared by that group, in a kind of negative halo effect.
Fake news also sometimes uses readers’ negative feelings about
one topic to elicit negative feelings about a different topic [63].
'Clickbait' is web content that draws people in by appealing to
common feelings and goals (such as making money, improving
social relationships, or finding out the truth about something). It is
often news-like. The designers dress up false or misleading
information to look plausible in order to to entice people to click
through.
Clickbait makes the user’s goal seem easy and within reach, with a
knock-on effect of dialing down critical thinking and making the
information feel believable. The information does not matter as the
sponsor company has already made their money when the user
clicks through to the site [69].

Examples Of Media Deceptions

Mass media and social media convince people to believe certain
things, regardless of whether they are fact, fiction, or something in
between. There are innumerable examples from historical and
contemporary media.
In 1782, during the US Civil War, Benjamin Franklin concocted a
fake newspaper supplement about native Americans and the British
uniting to scalp 700 Americans. He then sent the false story to his
friends, who sent it to their friends, and so on, and the story even
made it into the real newspapers [62,70].
An example of fake news closely mimicking real news came in the
most shared US fake news story of 2016: “Obama Signs Executive
Order Banning the Pledge of Allegiance in Schools Nationwide” [62].
The graphics and web address resembled a journalistic news
source, resulting in over two million shares within two months.
A more troubling example relates to the backlash against
vaccinations. The anti-vaccination movement arose from Andrew
Wakefield’s notorious discredited 1980s article linking the MMR
vaccine with autism [71]. Most of Wakefield’s colleagues later
retracted the article to clarify that they had found no causal link, and
in recognition of the harmful effects, the misinterpretation of their
results led to [72]. However, retractions are rarely as popular as the
original untrue story [68].
Finally, in 2017, fake news reports circulated on social media stating
that someone had murdered the president of South Sudan and that
his aide was plotting a military coup. The posts aimed to stir up
further violence in the country that was already suffering due to civil
war, but it turned out that the reports were untrue and originated
outside of South Sudan [71].
We must wonder how nefarious people achieve this deception. Is it
something about how they present the information? Fake news often
features appealing storytelling, sensationalizing, and plays on
compelling emotions like fear and desire, but what about how
readers receive and process the information?

What Is Media Literacy And Why Is It Important?

Media literacy means applying information literacy principles when
you read media reports. Information literacy means knowing when
you need information and finding, evaluating, and using the
appropriate information for your needs. Researchers believe that the
public has highly variable information literacy, specifically assessing
the quality and truth of information. This is also true for social media
information, which has no inbuilt quality control system; at least
traditional media has editors and journalistic standards [68,69].
Media literacy is more important now than ever before because of
the sheer number of messages we encounter every day. It is easier
to access media than in the past, as most people are constantly
connected, and catch up on the news by reaching into your pocket.
Several factors may underlie people’s reluctance to be skeptical
about what they read in the media and social media. These include a
lack of awareness about information literacy and the need to read
information critically. Further obstacles include confirmation bias,
increasingly convincing fake news items, and the rapid progress of
technology that we use to consume news [63,69].
According to large-scale surveys, most American adults get at least
some of their news from social media. In recent years this has
expanded to include adults over 50 years old for the first time [73].
This means it is vital for us to apply media literacy principles when
we read and share information.

Practical Ways To Apply Critical Thinking When Reading

Articles
So how can we avoid being influenced by fake news? One idea is to
treat it as fun fiction and delineate it clearly in your mind from real
news. Get your news from trusted sources. You could also find one
of the numerous online fact-checking websites and use those as part
of your investigation.
We already possess intuitive strategies for assessing the truth of
things we read and hear, but these enjoy varying levels of success.
We tend to rely on a few features of the information [68], but each of
these is prone to error:
Compatibility: does the new data fit with our current beliefs? If so, it
feels right to us, and the evidence weighs more strongly in favor of
the new data also being true. People prefer information that fits with
their world view.
Internal consistency: is the information plausible and consistent with
itself? People prefer good stories where the plot points follow from
one another, and the characters behave in a realistic way.
Credibility: we make a quick assessment of the source but the
surface characteristics such as whether it features a familiar person
often grab our attention, as opposed to contextual information like
the story’s purpose or where it appears.
Consensus: whether others also believe the story is a rough
indicator of its accuracy, we may over-rely on it. For instance, if
people we perceive as similar to ourselves believe something, we
are more likely to believe it even if there are other signals that it is
untrue.
When reading articles, bear these four points in mind and use them
to try to aid objectivity. However, these are descriptive: they tell us
how the mind works by default, rather than giving us the best method
to appraise news stories critically. Keep an open mind about the
story, and assess it using a more critical mindset than the one your
intuitive decision-making processes might tempt you into.
Rather than relying on intuitions, teachers tell their students to
assess online information using the CRAAP test [70,74]. Students
learn to assess whether the information is current, relevant,
authoritative, and accurate and look at its purpose. As you are
already a critical thinker, you are most likely familiar with how to
assess information against these criteria, but here is a brief
reminder:
Current: check the dates of both composition and publication, look
for any updates or retractions, and research further sources that
reference this one for the most up-to-date information.
Relevant: assess whether the material applies to what you were
looking for, whether the language fits with the topic, and whether
they have covered it properly. In the case of articles you did not
specifically search for, think about whether the title and introductory
section present the topic fairly; sometimes, fake news articles use
misleading headlines and images to draw readers in.
Authoritative: look for the author’s credentials and determine
whether they are qualified and experienced to write on the topic. You
can also examine whether they cover the content in a logical and
appropriate way.
Accurate: this can be more difficult to check for news stories and
particularly social media stories. If the author cites sources, see if
they are academic or official sources. If they quote scientific results,
you can see if they were published in mainstream journals (indicating
that the scientific community, in general, accepts these results as
valid investigations) and see whether other scientists have replicated
the results.
Purpose: review the details to see whether the author uses the
article to sell products or attract visitors to their site. You may find
evidence of vested interests and/or biased opinions that affect how
they treat the topic.
Although CRAAP is a useful checklist, some authors have criticized
it, as you need to spend a serious amount of time investigating the
source website itself. Lateral reading is an alternative approach that
we can use to assess online sources more quickly and fully. This
entails fact-checking beyond the site or story itself, including
performing a web search for the source or author [75,76]. It is also
important to know that search engine results and social media feeds
are heavily personalized. Still, not all students using online
information fully understand these facts [75].
As well as lateral reading, expert fact-checkers can accurately
categorize web sources by taking bearings. They evaluate the
source website using the ‘About Us’ section and visit other online
sources almost straight away to look for wider information about the
source’s authority and trustworthiness [76].
Establishing whether the source is credible is key to using a critical
thinking approach to gaining information from the media. However,
the rise of fake news may correlate with the general public’s
diminishing trust in experts and government sources [77]. The
internet and social media lie at the root of this trend. People
increasingly believe they can find out anything by going online and
that all opinions are equally valid, whether expert or otherwise [71].
This means it is becoming increasingly challenging to distinguish
between credible and non-credible sources, but remember that a
critical thinking approach can help you get closer to the truth.
It is enormously important to assess the credibility of the source.
Using lateral reading, you can gauge whether they consistently
report facts and whether they admit and publicize mistakes in their
reporting. You could also check mediabiasfactcheck.com, which
summarizes global news outlets in terms of their overall accuracy
percentage, and highlights political bias. This is useful for evaluating
sources you may not have come across before.
In addition, you can also consider whether the article meets the
standards described in the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code
of Ethics. Their ‘Seek Truth And Report It’ criterion covers many of
the standards discussed in this chapter [78]. Remember that most
social media sources are not answerable to this code.
You can also use online tools to verify the content. Some helpful
sites include:
Factcheck.org: focuses on US political claims across various media.
Snopes: investigates various categories of potential misinformation,
including hoaxes and urban legends as well as news items and
political claims.
Factscan.ca: fact-checker for Canadian politics.
BBC Reality Check: includes fact-checking and explainer articles for
the UK and international current affairs topics.

Action Steps
1. Media Literacy Practice
Perform a general web search for a topic of interest and assess two
of the resulting articles or webpages using CRAAP and lateral
reading. Notice whether the two approaches give you different
impressions of the sites, perhaps even leading to different
conclusions.

2. Deep Dive
Choose a news story that interests you; perhaps it relates to your
business or personal concerns. It could be one that you found during
Action Step 1. It should be sufficiently complex and mainstream for
you to find at least four different sources. Research the information
these sources report, aiming to be as diverse as you can. For
example, look for left and right-wing sources from both the mass and
social media. Chart on a piece of paper what they agree on and what
they disagree on. Can you see different 'facts' reported? What about
word choices indicating bias? You can repeat this exercise in the
future if you want to assess another news story in depth.

Summary
This chapter’s story showed how fake news concocted by extremists
snowballed and nearly spelled disaster for a company and a
community. This fictional story’s message was serious: many real-
world fake news stories have had terrible consequences. The few
examples given here should give you an idea.
The mass media is now immune to getting things wrong. Still, even
journalistic outlets vary in the quality standards they set for
themselves, so it is important to apply your critical thinking skills here
too. Three of the characters in the story displayed great analytical
skills in picking apart the mess of blogs and social media posts that
led to the misinformation problem. They presented their findings
rationally and calmly that defused the situation. In the end, this
positive outcome could have even enhanced the company’s
reputation.
Next, we move on to look at how others try to deceive us to our
faces and how we can sort the truth from the lies in these everyday
situations.

Takeaways
1. To separate sense from nonsense in mass media and social
media, we need to apply the rules of logic and use our own
expertise.
2. We need to be alert to fake news, which is deliberately concocted
to fool people, and not confuse it with real news, satire, editorial
opinion, propaganda, or advertisement [69].
3. Take a skeptical approach even if the story feels true, and beware
of ‘news’ that seems too extreme to be true.
4. You can use media literacy tools and resources, such as CRAAP
and lateral reading, to evaluate the source publication and the
author, recognize bias and opinions, and assess the accuracy of
claims.
 5

EVERYDAY LIES AND DECEPTION

A fter reading the fine print, Alicia decided she was happy with the
terms of the business loan.
She had recently met Aaron Lowen, a business development
consultant from Howsville, the next town along from hers. He strolled
into her ice-cream parlor and quickly persuaded her to open another
cafe in Howsville. She refused at first: she liked running a single site
business, and her customers found it charming to buy ice cream
from a family-run concern. The expansion was too risky.
However, Aaron insisted.
“They don’t even have real gelato in Howsville! With this artisan
Italian ice-cream, you’ll make a fortune! I promise you, there are no
decent ice-cream cafes at all.”
A smile flitted across Aaron’s face. Quickly, he looked serious again.
“Is this really a good opportunity?” Alicia asked.
“Yes, definitely,” Aaron grinned.
Alicia noticed a strange wobble of the head, but thought no more of
it.
So here she was: opening a new café. Once the loan was in place, it
was all hands on deck.
However, Aaron had not been a hundred percent truthful. A local
gourmet ice-cream company was running trucks and pop-up cafes
across town, and they had no qualms about targeting her new store.
Sometimes the local kids would even come in to criticize her product:
“Not as good as Toni’s.”
The trouble at the new branch rapidly damaged the entire business.
It seemed time to cut their losses. Then, vandals broke into the new
café. They wrecked the displays and littered ice-cream and toppings
everywhere. Alicia closed for the day, and her employees cleaned up
while she called the police and the insurance company.
This was almost the end of the whole company, but Alicia smiled and
kept going. Her sister-in-law gifted her some of the profit from her
own business, which kept Alicia afloat for a while. Sadly, the new
café was still not viable, so Alicia decided to close down.
On the last day, they organized an ‘everything must go’ event, with
half-price ice-creams for all the local high school and college kids.
Late in the afternoon, this turned into free ice-creams for all.
Alicia confided in a middle-aged lady who was enjoying a cookie and
cream cone. The lady was sympathetic:
“It’s very sad, but Aaron from Toni’s has such a good grasp of the
local business environment and so many friends and contacts in the
town. You were brave to compete with him.”
“Aaron who?”
“Aaron Lowen, our local entrepreneur. He’s involved in most of the
businesses in town, and even wants to open up in your town as well.
Can I get some white chocolate sprinkles with this?”
In a flat tone, Alicia directed her to ask at the counter. So Aaron had
lied.
Finally, she had found the missing piece of the puzzle: Aaron was
deliberately trying to put her out of business, and it had almost
worked. He had almost cost her everything. If Aaron had succeeded,
he would have been the number one ice cream seller in both towns!
She had to applaud his audacity: pop-up ice cream cafes and trucks,
rather than fixed premises, meant she had not discovered that there
was already a popular artisan ice cream maker in Howsville. So she
was back to her initial position, but it could have been much worse.
A few months later, things had improved. Sympathetic locals who
heard about the diabolical deception flocked to Alicia’s home town
cafe. It was a warm spring, so she added two bicycle-based ice
cream sellers. All this led to record sales, as well as bad publicity for
her rival Aaron.
Alicia was intelligent and successful, but she missed the signs of
deception. Aaron gave away some clues: the quick smile that flitted
across his face when he claimed there were no ice-cream cafes in
Howsville, and the head wobble when he confirmed that it was a
good opportunity, betrayed his real opinions. He promised something
that sounded too good to be true, and he appeared trustworthy,
using his expertise as a business consultant to add credence to his
claims.
Alicia noticed these clues but did not know how to interpret them.
She did not know that even accomplished liars reveal themselves
occasionally, as the human body and face express our emotions
even when we work hard to suppress them.
Most people are basically honest, but one deliberate deception could
potentially cost us a lot. Therefore, as well as examining claims and
evidence in detail, being skeptical about ideas, and examining
evidence, we need to look at other clues that can tell us if somebody
is lying, whether it is unintentional or deliberate on their part.

How To Spot A Liar

Outside of the media, people we interact with every day, expose us
to a great deal of information, much of which is true. Lies are
deliberate conscious deceptions, in which people either conceal
something or falsify information [79], so people have a huge interest
in methods for detecting when somebody is lying.
There is no single clue that tells us somebody is lying. Instead, we
must draw tentative conclusions based on as much evidence as we
can find [80].
We can apply critical thinking to the content of what people say, and
when we interact face to face, there are several additional sources
that can give us clues as to whether somebody may be lying. Liars
can accidentally reveal the truth by leaking information or emotions
they are trying to hide. A few behaviors might clue us in (but note
that these behaviors rarely reveal the content of the lie).
Liars sometimes work hard to conceal a lot of emotion, and we can
detect this cover-up by gathering evidence from their faces, bodies,
and voices, for instance, if somebody seems panicky. People who
tell the truth expect others to believe them, so they appear more
relaxed [81].
The words used provide the first set of clues. Three ways that
somebody’s words can suggest deception are: making errors in
repeated facts; slips of the tongue (stating the real fact or situation
by mistake); and saying far too much. In the latter case, you might
identify a liar because their explanation is overly elaborate and
detailed, suggesting they are trying desperately to convince you.
However, liars focus on faking their words and facial movements,
whereas their voice and bodily movements are less easy to falsify
[79]. Scientists have studied interpersonal signals from faces, voices,

and body language extensively inlie detection.

Many people believe that the eyes give away true feelings in terms
of interpersonal signs, and liars often deliberately try to appear
truthful using the eyes, such as making plenty of eye contact.
However, the impression conveyed by eye gaze differs across
cultures. Some regard direct gaze as disrespectful, which may affect
suspicion of guilt when police officers arrest or question people of
different ethnicities [80]. Because eye gaze is so deliberate, it is
perhaps a poor indicator of somebody's inner feelings.
Blinking is more spontaneous than eye gaze, and pupil dilation is not
under conscious control. Therefore these provide more reliable
signals of genuine feelings. Changes in frequency of blinking and
wide pupils could signal emotional arousal associated with
deception, but this is inconclusive since they are signs of general
emotional arousal. Pupil size was the best indicator of lying in a
meta-analysis comparing various signs of tension in liars [81].
Additional bodily signs of tension include sweating, pale face, and
flushing, but these are general to emotional arousal and not specific
to lying.
Facial signals are extremely complex. Liar’s faces communicate two
interesting strands of information: what they are trying to
communicate and what they are trying to hide. Liars often try to
conceal their true feelings, with varying success. Good ways of
reading faces to detect deception include [79]:
Passing expressions: people often express their feelings
spontaneously but then quite quickly suppress them. This rapid
masking of expressions can be a clue to dishonesty.
Micro-expressions: these are much faster than the passing
expressions described above. We do not typically perceive them, but
we can see them on paused or slow-motion videos. Trained
psychiatrists can observe them in normal conversation, having
learned to do so through their professional practice.
Specific parts of the face: some areas of the face are more
informative than others. For example, people fake smiles using only
the mouth and lower eyelids, whereas a genuine smile of happiness
features raised cheeks and wrinkles at the corners of the eyes.
People also find it difficult to fake the pursed lips of anger.
Smiles: if somebody smiles too much or at odd times during the
conversation, they may be using a social smile to conceal nerves. If
their smile disappears rapidly or slips off the face in unnatural steps,
they may be using a fake smile to conceal other emotions.
In terms of voice clues, listen for pauses and a lack of fluency. If the
speaker often pauses or for a long time, hesitates more than usual,
or uses filler sounds like ‘ah’ and ‘um,’ they may be improvising. The
high cognitive load of composing a lie while speaking to you might
be taking a toll on their verbal coherence [79]. However, this may be
unreliable. One linguistic study found fewer uses of ‘um’ and similar
words in lies, suggesting that these fluency errors are perhaps part
of normal speech rather than a sign of high cognitive load [82].
Raised pitch is a further vocal signal of lying [79,83]. People find fear
and anger difficult to hide vocally, especially if the lie they are telling
makes them feel that way, or they are worried you have figured out
their deceptiveness [79].
According to some acoustic research, people produce shorter
utterances with fewer syllables, speak more slowly and take longer
to respond, and vary more in pitch and intensity when they lie [83]. A
meta-analysis also suggests that liars say less and provide fewer
details than truth-tellers [81].
All of these modes of non-verbal communication provide hints that
somebody might be deceiving you. However, bodily clues might be
the best ones to look for. Experiments show that observers are
worse at picking up deception from facial and vocal cues than bodily
cues. Participants who only saw bodily postures and gestures were
much better at spotting the liar [79].
Remember that everybody has a different baseline. You are likely to
be better at detecting lies from somebody you know than a stranger.
It helps to distinguish between these three categories of bodily
movement:
Emblems: movements like nodding the head, shaking the head, and
shrugging. They are often intentional communicative gestures but
can occur without consciousness as well. Unintentional emblems are
often smaller versions and may reveal how somebody really feels.
Illustrators: often spontaneous, you may refer to these gestures as
gesticulation. Many of us use our hands a lot when speaking: we
draw pictures in the air and mime actions. People use fewer
illustrators when they lie, perhaps because it is more effort or they
are uncertain about what they are saying [80].
Manipulators: pinching, stroking, scratching, hair twisting, and similar
movements, including fiddling with small objects. People engage in
more of these gestures if they are nervous, but also when they are
feeling relaxed, so it is not a great clue to deception.
Be cautious when interpreting faces, voices, and body language, and
remember each of the methods described above is only a single
clue. Listen closely to what the person says, as well as, observing
how they behave. So can we find any more certainty?

What They Say Or What They Do?

There is no magic formula to discern whether somebody is trying to
deceive you or is giving you misinformation. Further, there are
numerous myths and misconceptions about how to detect lies. Some
experts claim that a significant portion of the police and customs
training materials on lie detection from interpersonal cues are
incorrect [79,84]. This suggests the scale of the problem, but
remember that police and customs are working with individuals that
they have never seen before, who will be feeling victimized and
perhaps even panicky due to being apprehended.
The clues described here are simply clues. They can give you an
idea of whether somebody is deceiving you: with an abundance of
clues, the likelihood of deception rises. However, the fact that you
are dealing with likelihood rather than certainty raises the problem of
false positives and negatives. The risks and consequences obviously
differ depending on the situation. Is it worse to doubt the truth or to
believe a lie?
For instance, anybody working in law enforcement or other high-
stakes occupations should be extremely cautious about how they
interpret the interpersonal signs of deception. They should keep an
open and skeptical mind and continue to gather evidence.
A further problem is that lying is a social interaction, and if somebody
feels uncomfortable, they may give off signals similar to those of
deception. If anyone has ever falsely accused you of lying, you will
remember how it feels. Similarly, shy individuals or people who find
themselves in an aversive situation may be mistaken for deceivers
simply because they feel nervous and untrusting. In both scenarios,
the accuser could misinterpret the accused’s discomfort as guilt
signals, further fuelling the false accusations.
Ideally, get a solid baseline so that you know the person and their
general demeanor. People in close relationships (both romantic
entanglements and friendships) may be better at detecting each
others’ lies, but they are also better at deceiving each other. One
reason for this is that they are familiar with each others’ typical
behavior and modes of speech and so can fake it more easily.
Another reason is that their desire to maintain a positive relationship
leads them to ignore the signs of deceit [85].
Romantic relationships are paradoxical in terms of honesty. Most
people agree that they want a potential romantic partner to be
honest, whether the imagined relationship is long-term or dating, but
they do not want extreme and absolute honesty. Instead, many
people realize that sometimes deception helps build self-esteem and
can be an act of kindness.
In very emotionally close relationships, the evidence on lie detection
is mixed: sometimes it seems that romantic partners are better at
detecting lies in each other; other evidence suggests the opposite
[85]. Perhaps it depends on the specific, highly personal details of the

relationship.
To detect lies of all types more successfully, we need to look at the
communication in context, including its content. We are more likely
to succeed using a rational approach, comparing what they say to
other evidence and our prior knowledge than by over-relying on
signals from the potential liar’s face or voice [81,86].
In terms of what they say, liars give less consistent accounts, told in
a less personal way, that feels less plausible to listeners. Their
stories seem to be told from a distance and are less clear; these
effects are more reliable than non-verbal cues such as eye gaze and
expressions [81].
Another clue is the structure of the story. Liars are more liable to tell
you what has happened in the order that it happened, whereas
somebody speaking the truth moves around the story’s timeline. This
structured approach suggests that liars have carefully composed
their story but, ironically, end up relating something that sounds less
natural [80].

Nobody Is Immune

Everybody is susceptible to believing lies and half-truths [79,81]. Even

the experts get it wrong sometimes.
People are overconfident in detecting lies from the face and voice,
which acts as a barrier to finding the truth. Faces, in particular, are
used for communication and expression, so any expressions read
from the face need not reflect how somebody really feels. Further,
communication via the face varies in different cultures and also
among individuals. We cannot extract any solid rules for detecting a
liar from their face or voice with so much variability, although they do
provide some clues. We would be better off using evidence and
trying to establish the facts [86].
Interestingly, one study suggests that trained police officers may be
no better or worse at detecting lies regardless of whetherthey focus
on the content of the lies, the person’s face and voice, or their body
language. Their accuracy was 50/50. They may as well have flipped
a coin. This illustrates that even trained professionals might be fairly
poor at working out when somebody is lying, despite high
confidence. A similar study showed that practice in itself improved
people’s performance, but instructions to attend to certain cues
(face, voice, and body language) had no effect [84].
One reason people get it wrong is that they assume that others are
honest [68,79,86]: we believe others by default. Most of us tell the truth
most of the time, so the bias towards belief normally leads to correct
conclusions and better cooperation. We rarely question others’
honesty unless something makes us suspicious; however, there is
evidence that many people are poor liars even when they attempt to
deceive [86].
Evidence suggests that lying is not particularly common. A study that
asked people how many lies they told over a day showed that most
people reported no lies at all, the vast majority told one or two lies,
and a small number of ‘prolific liars’ told half of all lies reported. You
might suspect that people lied to the researchers, but that would not
explain the distribution of the responses. Further, hundreds of people
participated in three separate experiments, adding credence to the
conclusions [87].
When people reflect on how they have detected lies successfully in
the past, their answers point towards two strategies: comparing the
lie to the available evidence and persuading the deceiver to confess.
Obtaining evidence relies on getting contextual information around
the lie, so you are likely to be better at detecting lies within your own
domain of expertise. Surmising that somebody has a motive to lie
raises detection accuracy to almost 100%, and it is useful to use
probing questions. Again, experts are better at this [88].
If you suspect somebody is lying to you, encourage them to talk. Get
the person to repeat their story and listen out for factual errors and
inconsistency [80].
We all need to be aware of our own motivations, emotions, and
preconceptions and do our best to avoid letting these color our
perceptions of others. Overall, it is difficult to decode when
somebody is lying to us. Luckily, in the case of our social
relationships, minor lies are often inconsequential or even positive.
However, modern life is full of scams and other deceptions, which
could be potentially very damaging.

Examples: Is Truth Rarer Than Fiction?

Here, we examine common scams and deceptions that
unscrupulous people and companies might use to sell things or
convince people to believe false ideas. We can look for the signs of
deception already described, but there are many problems with this.
Firstly, those who deliberately set out to deceive people are more
likely to be practiced liars, so they may display few signs of stress
when they are deceptive. Secondly, in the case of online deception,
we may not be faced with a person at all, so we have to use other
clues in the message itself.

Three of the most common online scams [89] are:

Advance fee scam: if you use email, you have probably received one
of these. A message purporting to originate from a relative of a
wealthy person asks for your assistance with accessing their funds.
They need a small amount of cash in advance, and will pay you a
huge fee once they have accessed the treasure trove. Other
advance fee scams include pyramid schemes and ‘work from home’
type business opportunities. Fraudsters circulate these scams to
thousands of people, but only a few need to succumb for the
scammer to make a profit.
Online selling scams: auction fraud, not delivering goods, and not
paying for goods purchased are the most common. Sometimes
identity theft and misuse of credit cards are also involved.
‘Scareware’ is another online selling scam,in which fake popups tell
the user their computer has a virus and they need to pay for a
special tool to remove it.
Investment scams: when a swindler convinces people to invest in a
fake business. The business sounds genuine and has a
professional-looking website, which anybody could easily create with
a small outlay and some web design skills, which leads a few people
to believe it is genuine.
Like many other forms of deception, these three all rely on people
falling for a falsified desirable idea: the large payout following the
small outlay, the honest seller or buyer, or the profitable investment.
People’s emotions may override their more critical faculties and lead
them to fall for something that many others would find unlikely [90].
The fraud may even be so convincing that it even fools people who
are confident in their skills at scam-spotting. The assumption that
people are mostly honest probably also plays a role [86,88].
The more a fraudulent claim plays on people’s hopes and wishes,
the more people will believe it [90]. So, it is important to report
scammers to the authorities, but what if you are unsure whether
something is a scam? US federal government [91] and the UK
Citizens Advice Bureau [92] give useful advice. All of these are signs
that you should be suspicious and not hand over any personal
information:

Does it seem too good to be true?

Is the contact unexpected?
Do they pretend to be from a trusted organization such as
your bank or social security?
 Do they ask for your personal data such as PIN or password?
Is there a problem you need to solve (like a huge tax bill) or
an unexpected prize?
Do they rush you to act immediately?
Do they ask you to pay in an unusual way like money transfer
or gift card or send you a check (that later turns out to be
fake)?

Outside of straightforward scams, real businesses and organizations

sometimes engage in trading practices that may be illegal or at least
dodgy [93], for example:
Fake reviews and testimonials: these are common on online
marketplaces. Sometimes celebrity testimonials are used, and it is
difficult to tell whether the celebrity gave their permission.
Unfounded predictions and promises: this may be illegal if the
company knew a specific claim was untrue, but fanciful advertising
claims are usually allowed.
Bait advertising: this is when a company advertises a product for
sale, but does not have a 'reasonable supply.' The bait product lures
people in; then the seller persuades them to buy something else.
Misleading guarantees, conditions, or warranties: for example, a
seller cannot make you take an extended warranty, but the
salesperson might try to imply this; this con relies on customers not
knowing the details of the business' legal obligations.
With so many companies and individuals trying to make money from
us, it is sensible to keep in mind that if something seems too good to
be true, it probably is. However, it would be cynical and destructive
to apply this attitude to our everyday interactions and relationships.
Remember, there are only a few prolific liars around, and they are
probably busy running online scams.

Action Steps
Now that we have looked at how to use critical thinking and evidence
to spot lies and deception in everyday life, it is time to apply some of
this knowledge. Try the following action steps.
1. The Lying Game
Play a game of lie detection with somebody close to you. Each of
you can prepare a handful of lies and truths that you will try to
convince the other person are true. Remember this is a fun learning
exercise, so use humorous or innocuous facts about yourselves that
the other person does not necessarily know. Use some of the
techniques covered in the chapter to convince them and try to detect
the lies correctly, and have a conversation afterward about how it
went.

2. Proof Of Lies
Try some of the techniques for spotting a liar. Find an online video
from a few years ago of somebody you know is lying because
someone else exposed them or they confessed. This could be from
politics, an interview with a public figure, or a televised court case.
Watch the video in slow motion and look out for some of the signals
we have examined in this chapter:

Physical signs of tension.

Fleeting and micro facial expressions.
Shifty body language such as small emblem gestures.

You could then do the same but listen for any acoustic signals, such
as raised pitch and frequent hesitation, perhaps comparing their
verbal behavior to an example when you know they are not lying.

Summary
In the story at the start of this chapter, it turned out that the business
consultant had seriously misled the business owner: the rival
company was a serious threat to her business’ expansion after all.
How could she have picked up on this?
Unfortunately, there is no surefire way to tell if somebody is
deceiving you, especially if it is somebody you do not know well.
However, Alicia could have checked the facts: did the other
neighborhood have real gelato? Was the promise that there were no
decent ice cream cafes in that town too good to be true? The
deceiver also showed a possible micro-expression (a fleeting smile
at an odd time) and an emblem gesture when we slightly shook his
head, possibly revealing that he was saying the opposite of the truth.
She might have been able to figure it out, but perhaps assumed that
this man was telling the truth because most people are honest.
In the next chapter, we will explore what some people might call a
special category of scam. We look at pseudoscience and how to
distinguish it from real science and technology.

Takeaways
1. Tune into the visible and audible signs of potential deception: you
can learn them through careful observation and practice. However,
you need to apply critical thinking to what they say and pair this with
a keen observation to get closer to the truth.
2. There is no sure-fire way to detect lies, but knowing the person or
establishing a baseline will help. Even a host of behavioral clues
cannot prove that somebody is lying.
3. People believe others by default, and research suggests this is
warranted as most people are honest.
4. Selling products and ideas is perhaps the exception; scams and
frauds are sadly very common, but you can detect them and
overcome them using a skeptical, analytical approach.
 6

PSEUDOSCIENCE VERSUS SCIENCE

W hen Marlon’s Mom

noticed something
moved to her retirement apartment, he
he found strange. The apartment was
spotlessly clean, but they found the same small object in every
corner of every room and window recess.
Marlon assumed that the previous resident must have gone
crackers. He or she had stashed a horse chestnut in every corner
they could find. The removal men carried on moving his mom’s
possessions in, whistling happily as they wedged the large couch
into the small living room. Marlon heard a tiny wood-like object roll
along the floor underneath the couch.
“Excuse me, guys,” he said. “I don’t think Mom wants those
chestnuts everywhere. Can you put them in the trash, please?”
The two assistants put down an oak dresser and looked to their
foreman for guidance, but Marlon’s Mom interjected before he could
say a word.
“They’re fine, gentlemen. Please carry on,” she said to the removal
men, giving Marlon a pointed look.
As the removal men carried on, Marlon looked to his Mom in
confusion.
“Isn’t it odd that they just left these chestnuts everywhere? Why don’t
you want them thrown out?” he asked.
His Mom gave him a superior look.
“They keep the bugs away, Marlon. It’s a tried and tested natural
remedy. I would have thought you would approve.”
Marlon could not help but burst out laughing, but his mother was
clearly serious.
“Proven? Who proved it?” he asked once he had his breath back.
“Not your new-fashioned scientists. Housewives have known about it
forever. Spiders are scared of the fumes they give off or something
like that. My Grandmother taught my mother, and my mother taught
me. Did you ever see a spider in my house? I thought not.”
Marlon was sensible enough to mumble in agreement and then drop
the conversation. He had to admit he had never seen a spider in his
Mom’s house, but she spent an awful lot of time dusting.
In fact, science has found no evidence for Marlon’s Mom’s belief that
horse chestnuts deter spiders [94]. This particular erroneous belief is
benign, but it illustrates the point that sometimes people simply
believe in received wisdom. Marlon’s mother believed her home was
spider-free because of the chestnuts, exhibiting confirmation bias.
Still, as Marlon’s inner voice hinted to him, the lack of spiders was
more likely due to her constant cleaning.
You might conclude that the mother’s belief in the chestnut deterrent
was a harmless superstition, but are all superstitions harmless?
Where it gets more debatable is the case of pseudosciences. These
are more complex and far-reaching than superstitions; they involve
entire belief systems.
A pseudoscience is a collection of beliefs or practices that people
mistakenly regard as scientific. Sciences challenge their own claims
and look for evidence that might prove these claims false through
systematic observation and experiment. In contrast, pseudosciences
aim to look for evidence that supports their claims, seeking
confirmation rather than falsification.

How (And Why) Science Works

Scientists analytically explore the world. The scientific process is the
most reliable way of understanding the world because it involves
hypothesis-testing and various mechanisms to scrutinize the
conclusions and evidence.
Essentially, science centers on things we can observe and measure.
We can define science as:
“An interconnected series of concepts and conceptual schemes that
have developed as a result of experimentation and observation and
are fruitful of further experimentation and observation” [95].
Conceptual schemes mean theories and models, and hypothesis
testing means generating a testable idea and then using observation
or experiment to test it. If we cannot observe something or test it by
experimenting, it is probably not a scientific idea. Scientists have an
array of methods and techniques to scrutinize evidence and draw
conclusions, many of these are specialized to the individual field of
study.
To understand whether a conclusion is valid, we should examine the
techniques used to collect the evidence as well as the evidence
itself. We can then make our own judgment about the reliability of
any associated claims.
Science should employ a rational approach, actively looking to make
sense of the world logically. Scientists describe their current
understanding of a given situation with reference to the evidence, as
well as an assessment of their confidence in that understanding [96].
Science makes certain very basic assumptions, including that
objective reality exists and that we can observe and measure it, and
find out the truth about things [96]. Some adherents of
pseudosciences might question these fundamentals, making it
difficult for science to compete fairly with pseudoscience.
Validity is a term research scientists use to ensure that their research
methodology is relevant to what they want to study. By assessing
validity, they cue themselves to think clearly and stay on track. For
example, a biologist would consider blood tests a valid way of
measuring liver function, but this technique would not work for all
biological variables.
Scientific research studies involve several formal stages. At each
stage, the investigators try to remain as objective and bias-free as
possible. You can think of the stages described below as a repeating
process because scientists use their observations and experiments
to develop their theories, leading to refinement of the theory, which
leads to further research questions [95,96].
Observation: Many scientific studies begin with observations. This is
when somebody observes something interesting by chance, without
changing anything to see what would happen. For example, a nurse
might notice that patients with a certain condition seem to recover
faster when doctors prescribe them aspirin rather than paracetamol
Formulate a research question: this is quite specific, but not usually
something that investigators can cover in a single study or
experiment. It takes the form of “does variable A affect variable(s) B”.
A research question for our example might be ‘does aspirin improve
the symptoms of the condition?’ The investigators might do several
studies to examine this.
Narrow the question: many research questions are too broad to form
testable hypotheses, so scientists must reduce them to questions
they can examine in a single study or set of studies. Narrower
questions for our example could be: do patients given aspirin spend
fewer nights in the hospital, do they live longer, or do they
experience a lower rate of relapse compared to those given
paracetamol?
Conduct research: gather data that forms evidence from experiments
or observations. Observational studies gather data without changing
the situation, whereas experiments change one variable while
keeping everything else constant. Research may be naturalistic, like
our example with hospital patients, or scientists might contrive a
more tightly controlled artificial situation.
Analyze data: scientists use descriptive and inferential statistical
methods to compare data against baselines, over time, or between
two or more experimental conditions. There are a huge number of
methods available to analyze qualitative and quantitative data, and
this is such a specialized area that statisticians work as collaborators
and consultants in all scientific fields.
Draw a conclusion: delineate the most likely explanation of the data
while also discussing alternative explanations. This does not imply
criticizing or outright rejecting alternative explanations since the
chosen interpretation could still be wrong. Further evidence might
result in the scientific community re-interpreting the result.
The scientific community is a key player in the continued effort of
scientists to reach a better estimate of the truth. Scientists write
specialist articles and present their data at conferences to spark
debate among their peers. Peer-reviewed journals, where experts
peruse the article before publication, publish most scientific papers
[12]. This gives readers reassurance that the methods are

appropriate and the data justify the conclusions.

What Is Pseudoscience?
Now that we have a clear definition of what science is and its
methods, we need to define pseudoscience. As the prefix ‘pseudo’
implies, pseudoscience refers to beliefs and activities that might
resemble science but are not science [12]. We call them ‘not
science’ because they diverge from mainstream scientific theory, and
in some cases, scientific methods cannot test them either [97].
The line between science and pseudoscience is not always clear,
though. Investigators working in pseudoscience are free to employ
hypothesis-testing and scientific techniques to examine evidence
and conclusions. But they sometimes commit mistakes and produce
misinformation in the process, and end up presenting incorrect
conclusions.
Examples of pseudoscience:
Alternative medicine: alternative therapists sometimes fail to specify
how the therapy works or make general references to things like the
energy that the practitioner harnesses or directs into the client's
body. It would be difficult to devise an adequate control situation to
compare to these therapies. Pseudoscientific therapies often rely on
hearsay rather than clinical trials, and this can be subject to
confirmation bias and the hasty generalization fallacy [1].
Psychic powers: many people across the world believe in
supernatural powers like extra-sensory perception and clairvoyance.
Believers and scientists alike find it difficult to test these ideas, and
although many have tried, the evidence is inconclusive [1].
Astrology: predicting people’s personality traits and future events
from the position of the stars, the Moon, and planets is another
ancient practice that appeals to people across the world. The
predictions are vague and often not falsifiable, and therefore have
not been tested in a rigorous way like scientific theories [98].
Investigators have found no correlation between star signs and
personality traits [99].
We should not confuse folk remedies and young sciences with
pseudosciences. Be skeptical of ancient traditions: they might work
and might not, but age alone does not imply efficacy [95]. We should
also be open-minded about young sciences while establishing their
methods and world views, although further scientific investigation
may falsify them. One example is germ theory, which the scientific
establishment thought was implausible at first, but further
investigations confirmed that microbes, not foul air, caused diseases
[61].

People and communities hold biases, but so do scientists. The

history of science shows that socio-cultural contexts affect how
scientists work, despite their drive to be bias-free. For example, the
mistaken idea that the surface of the human brain looked like the gut
influenced early scientific drawings of the brain, even though the
artist could see a real brain in front of them [95].

Why Do People Believe In Pseudosciences?

Confirmation bias and emotional appeal are two reasons why
pseudoscience draws people in, but people do not adopt unscientific
beliefs for no reason. Some pseudosciences are ancient, even
predating modern science and medicine, and in these cases, people
are sticking with what they already believe. We know that people are
reluctant to change their minds once they have decided [11].
According to surveys conducted in 1993 and 2000, most American
college students do not know the difference between astronomy (the
scientific study of the cosmos) and astrology. Scientific education
can help people distinguish pseudoscience from real science, but
they may hold onto the pseudoscience as well, particularly if it is a
widespread tradition like astrology. Newspapers have been
publishing horoscopes for generations, and their appearance
alongside news may enhance their believability [99].
However, demonstrations of scientific reasons behind phenomena
can cause people to revise their beliefs [97,98]. For example, many
people worldwide see solar and lunar eclipses as supernatural
events, but they revise their belief when scientists demonstrate that
they can predict eclipses in advance [98].
Some evidence points to shared traits among believers of
pseudoscience. People with a ‘conspiracy mentality’ and lower
knowledge of science were more likely to believe in pseudoscience.
Conspiracy mentality consists of distrust and paranoia aimed at
authorities like governments, which correlates with certain
personality traits. This mentality correlates with conspiracy
theorizing, which correlates with rejecting scientific evidence [100].
Another characteristic of believers in pseudoscience is a more
intuitive thinking style: they engage in the faster, more automatic
reasoning style that Kahneman described [11]. However, instructing
people to use the slow system and think more critically can reduce
automatic belief in unfounded claims [97].

Distinctions Between Science and Pseudoscience

One major difference between science and pseudoscience is that
pseudoscience seeks confirmation, whereas science seeks
falsification. When people claim that pseudoscience effects a cure
for a disease, they work back from the result and conclude that the
pseudoscientific intervention caused it [1]. Real scientists, in contrast,
are skeptical of their own findings and theories, alongside being
highly motivated to discover the truth [101].
Some pseudosciences are not testable and rely on people having
faith and belief that they work or explain things. In contrast, scientific
ideas are measurable and testable by definition. However, scientific
ideas sometimes contradict common sense, and pseudoscientific
ideas sometimes seem to make more sense to laypeople [101].
A further difference is that pseudosciences do not change and
develop in the same way as sciences. Instead, they either remain
the same or change randomly, whereas scientists add new ideas to
their science based on research refining their theories. This
generates more hypotheses for them to investigate. Pseudosciences
develop more haphazardly, with new ideas having no necessary
relationship to the previous ones [12,95], whereas sciences usually
develop gradually with occasional drastic paradigm shifts [1,61].
Additionally, pseudoscientists do not usually publish their work in
peer-reviewed journals. We can also check their sources, as
pseudoscientific practitioners do not always reference scholarly
sources [95].
Pseudosciences are popular because people would like to believe
them; they are exciting and capture people’s imagination, perhaps
more so than mainstream science. Pseudosciences may be
harmless - although arguably some are not if they divert people from
seeking effective treatment. For example, believing in untrue things
is perhaps disempowering because it prevents people from
accessing the truth [2].

How To Approach Ideas With An Open Mind

To sum up, critical thinkers must be able to approach a
pseudoscientific issue with an open mind, ready to follow the
evidence and the arguments wherever they lead. Apply your
skepticism and reasoning skills.
If you think an idea may be pseudoscientific, look for its sources,
examine the logic of the argument, and consider whether the author
has a motive for ‘selling’ the pseudoscience, such as selling products
[95]. This does work: both critical thinking and a skeptical approach

reduce people’s belief in unfounded pseudosciences [97]. There are a

few useful ideas you can apply when reading or hearing about
pseudosciences.
Firstly, remember Occam’s razor: the best theory is the one that
forces you to make the fewest assumptions. The simplest
explanation is often the best. Some pseudosciences ask us to
believe in unfalsifiable and unmeasurable ideas like a universal
energy that can flow through crystals, and we can apply Occam’s
razor to such ideas [102]. The simpler explanation is the placebo
effect, an effect based on extensive evidence whereby people’s
expectations can make them feel better.
Secondly, the burden of proof principle. This argues that when
somebody asks society to believe something that diverges from our
accepted knowledge about the world, they should supply evidence to
support their claims, rather than making it society’s job to disprove
them.
Thirdly, Sagan’s balance principle says that extraordinary claims
require extraordinary evidence. Therefore, minor evidence like a
handful of cures or correct predictions cannot ‘prove’ a
pseudoscience [102,103].
Although many scientists deride pseudosciences, remember that all
sciences have to start somewhere, and it takes time to gather the
evidence. By keeping an open mind and analyzing things rationally,
you can keep abreast of new developments while avoiding getting
sucked in by nonsense.

Action Steps
1. Detective Work
Make a brief list of possible pseudosciences and use your skills to
gather evidence and decide whether you think they are real science
or pseudoscience. If you need ideas, choose a couple of these:

Iridology
Mycology
Homeopathy
Neurochemistry
Geomorpholog
Macrobiotics
2. Study Skills
Devise a scientific theory within your field of expertise, and plan an
investigation. This could be something work-related, within a leisure
pastime (such as sports or creative work), or something silly and fun.
Whatever you choose, aim to be thorough. It is fine if you cannot
conduct the study for real. For example, if it involves time, resources,
or ethical issues.
Work through the general scientific method to hone your idea and
generate something you can test. Make casual observations,
formulate a research question, narrow this to a testable hypothesis,
and consider how you would analyze the data. If you are not a
statistical expert, never fear - you can always draw a graph and
compare the data visually.
Finally, consider what valid conclusions you could draw from different
results. Congratulations, you have just proved you are not a
pseudoscientist!

Summary
In the anecdote at the start of the chapter, we met Marlon, who was
confused by his Mom’s insistence on keeping horse chestnuts in the
corners of her apartment. She said this was a well-known way of
keeping spiders out of the home, but she could not explain why
horse chestnuts put them off. This vague explanation is similar to
pseudoscience: people might believe something works, but they do
not know why.
Marlon’s Mom believed the practice worked because it was
traditional, and she also exhibited confirmation bias. Even Marlon
succumbed to it slightly when he reflected that he had never seen a
spider in his Mom’s house. However, less reliable than objective
evidence.
A scientific approach to any idea requires observation, followed by
defining a solid research question that you can test in the real world.
This kind of study does not always get done for pseudoscience. In
many instances, it cannot be done because there is no adequate
control condition to compare to pseudoscientific practice. Overall,
science and pseudoscience alike provide us with ample
opportunities to exercise our critical faculties.

Takeaways
1. Scientific methods and processes are the most reliable ways to
explore and find out about the world.
2. However, not everything that resembles science is actual science.
Mistakes and misrepresentations in the form of pseudoscience can
tempt people towards incorrect conclusions.
3. Pseudosciences persist for many reasons, including inherent
biases, wishful thinking, tradition, and certain personality traits.
4. Keep an open mind about novel ideas, but remember that some
ideas are more useful than others because they help us understand
and predict the world.
 AFTERWORD

Marvin lazed on the decking at his lake house, watching the fish
whirling around in the clear water. His work phone vibrated on the
kitchen counter, but he let it ring. He knew the call spelled no good
for his summer retreat.
Hours later, the evening drew in, and Marvin finally got around to
checking his missed calls. He was surprised to see that his bank had
called him and left a message. That was unexpected. He managed
to call them on the number they left and got through to an operator
straight away. The line was terrible, but the voice on the other end
sounded urgent.
“I can’t hear you,” said Marvin.
“Give me your password, Mr. Keller,” the crackly voice said.
“Of course…” Marvin duly gave the operator his password and
further security details.
Apparently, there was a problem with his account, which meant he
had to wire his money to a different account urgently.
Did you guess? Scammers targeted Marvin and managed to get him
to transfer all his funds to them. He did not even notice until he
returned from his lake house to double trouble: his work colleagues
had realized he had ripped them off, and he realized he had gained
nothing because he had fallen for a telephone banking scam.
In this example, the protagonist was lax about checking the
credentials of the person calling him. The signs were there,
particularly the unscheduled contact and urgency of transferring the
funds. His lack of skepticism about the call ended up costing him a
lot.
Separating sense from nonsense is a massively difficult task, not
least because potential deceptions bombard us all the time, almost
as if they were waiting in line for us to drop our guards. However, we
can get closer to the truth by applying critical thinking techniques to
information we encounter each day. In summary:
Critical thinking approach: this means reasoning logically, using
evidence rather than working to justify conclusions we desire.
Gathering information to argue for a predetermined conclusion is
easy but wrong. With critical thinking, we can be sure that our
decisions are conscious, and deliberate and based on facts. We
must be clear about the difference between facts, opinions, and
claims. We must know about the role emotions play in human
cognition. Lastly, we must seek evidence relating to purported facts,
including researching the source of and reason for any message.
Our complex minds: how our brains work can lead to blurred
boundaries between truth and non-truth, or even getting things
completely wrong without even being aware of it. Humans are
emotional creatures with a drive to learn from and believe others, so,
unsurprisingly, misinformation spreads. Furthermore, biases,
fallacies, and heuristics all have a significant influence on our
thinking, sometimes without us ever becoming aware of it.
Scientific skepticism: this is an attitude that can help gauge the truth
of claims. Be like a scientist and question whether a claim you hear
can be verified or falsified. Scientific skepticism means overcoming
our natural inclination to process information quickly and
automatically, and instead stepping back, slowing down, and really
analyzing what we encounter. Skepticism means doubt, not
necessarily disbelief, and it works best with an open-minded outlook.
The media: social media and the mass media are the major sources
of information for the vast majority these days, but they vary in
reporting accuracy. Some information can even be completely false,
designed to lure people in to spend money and/or time on websites
run by shysters. Use media literacy techniques like lateral reading to
get a deeper understanding of the information you see in the media,
rather than taking it at face value.
Deception: dishonesty is fairly widespread outside of the media, too.
Most people are honest enough about the things that matter, but we
would all be wise to stay alert for the signs that people are lying to
us. Faces, voices, and body language all provide clues, but we
should pay attention to what they say as well. Similarly, be alert to
the signs of fraudsters using scams like advance payment schemes.
Pseudosciences: are explanations or techniques that claim a
scientific basis or approach, but they are distinct from sciences in
several ways. Science uses a cycle of observation, testing, and
refinement of theories and methods, aiming to advance knowledge in
a specific area. In contrast, pseudosciences are sometimes difficult
to test in a truly scientific manner. However, cynics sometimes
mislabel progressive science as pseudoscience, so we should do
our best to assess new ideas in an open-minded and skeptical
manner.
In conclusion, now that you have the tools required to separate fact
from fiction, make sure to do your critical thinking as well as you can
and work to develop it. Critical thinking helps you recognize and
avoid harmful and useless thought patterns. It helps you to reach
better conclusions. It improves the quality of your thinking, raising
your chances of achieving your goals. Good luck!
 ONE FINAL WORD FROM US

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