Baloney Detection Kit

Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptic Society and founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine has an informative video on YouTube. He takes people through what Carl Sagan dreamt up for those struggling for common sense guidelines for determining when something is credible or not in terms of science. He highlights eight questions that can serve as guides to what is and isn't science. They include:

1. How reliable is the source of the claim? 2. Does the source make similar claims? 3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else? 4. Does this fit with the way the world works? 5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim? 6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point? 7. Is the claimant(s) playing by the rules of science? 8. Does verifiable evidence exist? 9. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

Below are possible areas that may or may not be pseudoscience, protoscience, or non-science. Choose a topic that you would like to reach and test against the Baloney Detection Kit as best as you can. Let us know if the think the topic is "baloney", and if it’s not science, does it guarantee that it’s not true? What about if it is science? Does it mean that it’s 100 percent certain, or is the knowledge tentative, at least in the realm of science?

Astrology Homeopathy Accupuncture Telepathy Cold Fusion The Bermuda Triangle Over the counter diet pills Hypnosis Vaccines & Autism Prenology Flu Shots Parapsychology GMO Food Chiropractic Medicine Polygraphy Magnetic Therapy Handwriting analysis Ufology Vaccines Intelligent design Great Spaghetti Monster Life on other planets Cryonics Pluto's reclassification as a dwarf planet Human evolution Earth’s beginning

Source: The Baloney Detection Kit was an idea of the late scientist, Carl Sagan, and today is part of a video series produced by the Richard Dawkins Foundation and available on YouTube (https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNSHZG9blQQ, Length: 14 minutes)