THE BALONEY DETECTION KIT
The following are suggested as tools for testing
arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent arguments:
- Wherever possible
there must be independent confirmation of the facts
- Encourage substantive
debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
- Arguments from
authority carry little weight (in science there are no
"authorities").
- Spin more than one
hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
- Try not to get overly
attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours.
- Quantify, wherever
possible.
- If there is a chain of
argument every link in the chain must work.
- "Occam's
razor" - if there are two hypothesis that explain the data equally
well choose the simpler.
- Ask whether the
hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by
some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others
duplicate the experiment and get the same result?
Additional issues are
- Conduct control
experiments - especially "double blind" experiments where the
person taking measurements is not aware of the test and control subjects.
- Check for confounding
factors - separate the variables.
Common fallacies of logic and
rhetoric
- Ad hominem -
attacking the arguer and not the argument.
- Argument from
"authority".
- Argument from adverse
consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire
consequences of an "unfavourable" decision).
- Appeal to ignorance
(absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
- Special pleading
(typically referring to god's will).
- Begging the question
(assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).
- Observational
selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).
- Statistics of small
numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).
- Misunderstanding the
nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and
alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average
intelligence!)
- Inconsistency (e.g.
military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific
projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are
not "proved").
- Non sequitur -
"it does not follow" - the logic falls down.
- Post hoc, ergo
propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" -
confusion of cause and effect.
- Meaningless question
("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable
object?).
- Excluded middle -
considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the
"other side" look worse than it really is).
- Short-term v.
long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental
science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").
- Slippery slope - a
subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects
(give an inch and they will take a mile).
- Confusion of
correlation and causation.
- Straw man -
caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack..
- Suppressed evidence or
half-truths.
- Weasel words - for
example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to
get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art
of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old
names have become odious to the public"
Carl Sagan, “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”(New
York: Random House, 1997), 201-218.
