Baloney Detection Kit.

• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the "facts."

• Arguments from authority carry little weight

• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence

• Spin more than one hypothesis

• Not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours

• Quantify

• If there's a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work

• Occam's Razor

• Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified

• ad hominem

• argument from authority

• argument from adverse consequences

• appeal to ignorance

• special pleading

• begging the question

• observational selection

• statistics of small numbers

• misunderstanding of the nature of statistics

• inconsistency

• non sequitur

• post hoc, ergo propter hoc

• meaningless question

• excluded middle, or false dichotomy

• short-term vs. long-term

• slippery slope

• confusion of correlation and causation

• straw man

• suppressed evidence,

• weasel words