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)
Baloney Detection Kit
Copyright 2015. University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
SciEd.ucar.edu
Copyright 2015. University Corporation for Atmospheric Research