Dear Editor:

Lately we have been treated to a number of uniformed opinions masquerading as fact. In Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon-Haunted World,” we are given a Baloney Detection Kit. With apologies to Dr. Sagan I have distilled this kit into concise bullet points.

• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
• In science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
• Test more than one hypothesis.
• Do not to get overly attached to any hypothesis just because it’s yours.
• Quantify. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations.
• If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise)—not just most of them.
• When faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
• 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.

Better and fuller explanations of the “Fine Art of Baloney Detection” can be easily found online.

This is the difference between being a skeptic and living in a universe of alternate facts and denial of reality.

Fred W. Nehring

Boothbay