I encourage my students to have a healthy sense of scientific skepticism. That may sound like inappropriate advice in light of how much disinformation is associated with climate change. But scientific skepticism is different from climate change denialism.
Carl Sagan sums it up as well as anyone. In his 1996 book, The Demon-Haunted World, Dr. Sagan identifies the elements of scientific methods that are essential to identifying what makes a scientific report credible. In his grounded and humble manner, he calls the process “the fine art of baloney detection.” His summary is provided below.
You can find more of my reflections on climate change in my blog on my webpage: https://www.patrickjpaterson.com/
From Dr. Carl Sagan:
“What [scientific] skeptical thinking boils down to is the means to construct and to understand a reasoned argument and – especially important – to recognize a fallacious or fraudulent argument. Among the tools:
· Whenever possible, there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”
· Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
· 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 in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
· Spin more than one hypothesis. If there’s something to 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 has a much better chance of being the right answer.
· 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. Compare it fairly with alternate [explanations]. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.
· Quantify. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations.
· If there is a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise), not just most of them.
· Occam’s Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
· Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Inveterate skeptics mush be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments, and see if they get the same results.
From: Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (Ballantine Books, 1996), 210-211.