There are some things that I failed to mention in the chapters on Phony-Baloney Detection. They came mind while writing chapter 19.
First is that the six Phony-Baloney Detection Lessons I mentioned are really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to critical thinking. The ones I mention are excellent basic principles that if you master will get you a good start on developing critical thinking skills.
There are many more fallacies in critical thinking that one must and should learn. An excellent web site called The Nizkor Project:
is an excellent source from which I have drawn liberally to write this book.
Second, is that there are two problematic issues in critical thinking that I think I should have mentioned.
The first is that there is an almost genetic capacity in men to simply believe what they want to believe no matter what. I don’t know what to call this tendency but it is a truth nevertheless. Men will, in the face of the most concrete, perfectly constructed argument will throw logic to the wind and believe what they want to believe.
An example of this is a common myth that if you shave your hair all off that it will grow back thicker and fuller. This is one of the most ridiculous fables on the face of the earth but I have heard it over and over from people who should know better. And if you dare suggest otherwise to these people they will look at you like you had just told them you are a triple-axe murdering serial killer wanted in all the countries of the world.
The most intelligent and highly educated are not immune to this either. Scholars who so badly want their well-funded experiments to come out with the “desired” results will be tempted to put spin and twists on preliminary experimental results in order to protect their grant funding. Or, they may even be so desirous of a particular result that they will interpret uncertain and inconclusive test results to mean what they want it to mean.
This happens all the time!
The other problematic issue is that of Trustworthy Experts. Let’s face the facts here. We cannot possible know everything about everything and will at some point (for me, many points) have to begin to trust the experts.
How do we know who to trust and when to trust them?
Seven months before moving to Mexico, I went through my yearly physical and a lump was found in my thyroid gland. Now as much a I would love to have a Medical Degree the truth is that I did not and had to depend upon the expertise and professionalism of someone I didn’t know at all to take this fist-sized tumor from my throat. I had to trust an expert.
How does this apply to the illegal alien issue and those who seem to despise them so? If you are on the side of the Minuteman issue or pro-illegal alien issue how do you know that an expert is telling you the truth of not when they say that the “illegals” are doing this and doing that to America?
You do so by applying the Phony-Baloney Detection Rules about which I have written in this book.
But realize this and commit it to heart. Even the experts may have a vested interest in getting you to believe something that is in their interest for you to accept hook, line, and sinker! Just because they may be a doctor of this or that, and have college degrees in subject you cannot even pronounce, does not mean they are the moral equivalent of the Lord Jesus Christ!
Trustworthy Experts will:
Never try to convince you that they know more than they really do!
Never will never try to evade, duck and avoid your Phony-Baloney Detection.
Tell you of their own biases.
Tell you how the studies were conducted and how and who (peer review) replicated their studies and the consequent resultswhether they agreed or not.
Tell you not only what was right about the results of their particular experiment but what went wrong.
Tell you what might make the results they achieved invalid.
Tell you all of the information their experiment achieved and not just the result that will lead you to one specific conclusion.
This is what is, for lack of a better word, so sickening me when I read these, “Now here are our indisputable facts that the Mexicans sneaking into our country are going to get us and get us good.”, rhetoric.
Just “Who Says” this is so and where is the proof? Do not give me rehashed quotes from more rehashed quotes but show me the science from Trustworthy Experts.
Doug Bower is a freelance writer, Syndicated Columnist, and book author. His most recent writing credits include The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Houston Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Transitions Abroad. He is a columnist with Cricketsoda.com and more than 21 additional online magazines. He is also a writer with EzineArticles.com with a readership of almost 6,000. He lives with his wife in Guanajuato, Mexico. His newest books, Mexican Living: Blogging it from a Third World Country and The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico can be seen: CLICK HERE–
