A lesson in critical thinking

The Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate Research of the Univsersity of Louvain-La-Neuve made a brilliant webpage on critical thinking (in French though) (UPDATE linkfix)

They took a random presentation of a pseudoskeptic, and demonstrate what happens if you to take at least the following steps

For every reference used in the presentation:

• check if the cited article hasn’t been retracted/corrected
• check if the ‘conclusion’ used in the presentation actually is the conclusion of the original author
• check if the reference used is an op-ed or a peer review paper

For every graph used in the presentation

• check if the source is a scientific paper or not
• check if the presentation uses the original legend of the graph
• check if the axis are labelled correctly
• check if the graph actually supports the message of the presentation
• check if the graph is not taken out of context
• when there are several graphs used:
  • check if all graphs use the same units and scale
  • check if all graphs represent the same time period
  • in case of doubt: look for the original data and replot the graph

For every statement made in the presentation

• check if that statement is referenced
• check if the statement isn’t taken out of context

For every time-period used in the presentation

• check if the time-span used is long enough to be speaking about climate instead of noise (so, no conclusions of a one-year time span etc.)

With just a little critical thinking, you stumble upon issues like this:



There’s some more slides on the TECLIM-page left as an exercise. Enjoy.