How Carl Sagan Beat Pseudoscience (The Sagan Method)

Astronomer Carl Sagan had a “consumer tested” method for busting pseudoscience. Here’s how it worked.

In chapter 12 (The Fine Art of Baloney Detection) of Sagan’s ‘The Demon Haunted World,'' he lays out a method for detecting and debunking pseudoscience. Whether tackling astrology, channeling, creationism, homeopathy, or alien abductions, Sagan’s ‘Baloney Detection Kit’ can handle the challenge. Scientists utilize the tools in this kit as a regular part of their work, and I think it’s time we learn how to use them in our day-to-day lives.

This Demon Haunted World review and discussion is my way of continuing the mission of Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and their peers. As Sagan in DHW, "Not explaining science seems to me perverse.
When you're in love, you want to tell the world."

***Click here to listen to The Demon Haunted World (or anything else) for free with a 30-day free trial from Audible***

“The Fine Art of Baloney Detection” in full:

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Sagan, C. (1995). The Fine Art of Baloney Detection. In The Demon-Haunted World. Random House.
Interview with Charlie Rose

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This video contains 100% therapeutic grade skepticism.*

*This statement has not been evaluated by the FDA

[GeneticallyModifiedSkeptic]

Listen to The Demon Haunted World (or anything else) for free with a 30-day free trial from Audible:

[jorgerangel]

Good arguments, the part about feeling personally attack when our believes are challenged is so true, no matter the nature of the believes.
Also, feeling bad is not a good reason not to challenge them

[hisxmark]

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” --- François-Marie Arouet

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe anything because it s found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept and live up to it.” --- Buddha Siddhartha Gautama Shakyamuni

[jeremyjj]

Just finished reading it. As someone born in 1996 (the year it was written and also the year he passed) It blew me away how many of the societal issues mentioned had a direct impact on my upbringing. How i wish someone in my life exposed me to these ideas and kept me away from the tv screen growing up. Nonetheless I am the master of my fate today and i’m eternally grateful for figures like sagan who opened the doors for me.

[RockinAtheist]

J. Krishnamurti summed it up as follows - "The mind gives meaning to anything, but the meaning it gives is meaningless."

[leviathan]

Clearly the universe popped into existence last Thursday with all currently subatomic particles in their exact energy levels positions and momentum.

[suziwolf]

Every time you said something that made me think of a counterpoint, you addressed that counterpoint almost immediately. Well done :3

[mattfoley]

How to tell who is knowledgeable: the person who says he knows more about it than anyone. Believe me.

[corsaircaruso]

Just downloaded “The Demon-Haunted world” audiobook as a result of watching this video. I’m looking forward to listening to it.

[arsimckhoi]

The sooner you can accept "i dont know" without saying "therefore paranormal thing happened" as an okay answer then you can start learning things.

[shizunne]

Beliefs are like a cage you cannot see. They will keep you from learning, from growing, from being truly free.

[australianandrew]

“How ya doin'?' I always think, What kind of a question is that?, and I always reply, 'A bit early to tell.”

[davidcavallino]

As a Jesus follower and Sagan enthusiast I appreciated this video!! (I enjoy your content and your reverence of truth)

[MrCharlyAndy]

It’s very important to establish, in the absence of compelling evidence for or against a proposition, a third category of classification. This category is the category of the unknown, of neither belief nor disbelief.

[AlexStock]

It warms my heart that Carl considered being fooled worse than having your money taken.

[CaptainTae]

I wish my woke friends would follow this.

[erwinchew]

⭐Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit⭐

Tool #1: Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the "facts."

Tool #2: Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents from all points of view.

Tool #3: Don't accept arguments from authority.
"Arguments from authority carry little weight - 'authorities' have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts."

Tool #4: Spin more than one hypothesis.
"If something can be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among "multiple working hypothesis", has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fallacy."

Tool #5: Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours.
"It's only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don't, others will."

Tool #6: Quantify
"If whatever it is you're explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you'll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypothesis. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging."

Tool #7: If there's a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) - not just most of them.

Tool #8: Occam's Razor
"This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypothesis that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler."

Tool #9: Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified.
"Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much, Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle - an electron, say - in a much bigger Cosmos, But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result."

Sagan's concluding words on the subject:
"Like all tools, the baloney detection kit can be misused applied out of context or even employed as a rote alternative to thinking. But applied judiciously, it can make all the difference in the world - not least in evaluating our own arguments before we present them to others."

[hill]

Did I get it right? Thank you for the video!

1: Independent sources.
2: Quality debate.
3: Skepticism of authority's hypotheses.
4: Many competing hypotheses.
5: Skepticism of your own hypotheses.
6: Measurable hypotheses.
7: All supporting statements must be true.
8: Choose hypotheses with the fewest assumptions.
9: The hypotheses must be falsifiable.

Get evidence from independent sources(1), over which evidence you should have quality debate(2) and generate many(4) measurable(6) and falsifiable(9) competing hypotheses, where you are skeptical of authority's(3) and your own(5) hypotheses, until all the supporting statements for the hypotheses have been proven true(7) with the fewest assumptions(8).

Just as you would want your food tested to make sure it wouldn't poison you, you want your evidence and hypotheses tested to make sure they do not misinform you.

[maalekar]

Absolutely excellent sir. Well done. I wish more would listen to this.

[rashkavar]

It's always nice to see Occam's Razor expressed properly. So many people quoting it drop the part about fitting all the data and then point at that obvious flaw in their fake version of Occam's Razor as a reason for it to be bullshit. I've literally had to find documentation of the various phrasings of it used by people throughout history in order to convince people that it's not just "pick the simplest explanation."