Considering Sagan's actual Baloney Detection Kit

A couple weeks back when I reviewed Steele's What’s Natural? column regarding Carl Sagan’s advice, I took Steele’s quotes at face value, though I had some doubts.  Since then I've done some checking and the differences are striking and worth sharing.

One thing worth pointing out is that Jim ignores that the Baloney Detection Kit was about how scientists view problems and that laypeople could learn from that.  One thing that bothers me about Steele's take, is that he's always implying spectators and dilettantes are as smart as actual trained experienced experts. 

Here I simply want to allow Carl Sagan's own words to speak for him, though with an introduction from Maria Popova:

Through their training, scientists are equipped with what Sagan calls a “baloney detection kit” — a set of cognitive tools and techniques that fortify the mind against penetration by falsehoods:

The kit is brought out as a matter of course whenever new ideas are offered for consideration. If the new idea survives examination by the tools in our kit, we grant it warm, although tentative, acceptance. …

The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking     -      

BY MARIA POPOVA

https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-kit-carl-sagan/

… But the kit, Sagan argues, isn’t merely a tool of science — rather, it contains invaluable tools of healthy skepticism that apply just as elegantly, and just as necessarily, to everyday life. By adopting the kit, we can all shield ourselves against clueless guile and deliberate manipulation. Sagan shares nine of these tools:

1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts.”

#13 Critical Thinking and "keep the debate alive" - CC/Steele Landscapesandcycles Debate

A virtual debate with Jim Steele, based on his interview at Heartland Institute: 

Heartland Daily Podcast | Jim Steele | January 27, 2015 

Research Fellow H. Sterling Burnett (for the National Center for Policy Analysis) interviews Jim Steele, ecologist, director emeritus of the Sierra Nevada field campus of San Francisco State University

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Steele writes:  "And we trust the scientific theory because its been fairly tested by others - the theory must out perform all alternate explanations, eliminate confounding factors plus lively debate.  But, what I was finding was the scientific process was being defiled when scientists refused to debate in public. ... and any attempt to prevent that debate, in our schools, in the media, in peer reviewed science, it's only denigrating the scientific process.  ... 

And I think those public debates would help create real climate literacy …"

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Well then Mr. Steele, let's have our Great Global Warming Science Debate.  

I will accept these responses from your Heartland Institute podcast as your opening round.  I'll offer my rebuttals, evidence and questions.  I agree to post your thoughtful responses unaltered. (Though it's looking like you're going to do your best to hide and ignore these critiques of your self-certain claims. Your silence will serve to expose your hypocrisy and inability to defend your statements on an even playing field.)

In this thirteenth installment I want to look at Jim advocating that we empower our youth to judge the veracity of experts and other such notions in "critical" thinking.

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"How should society contend with those who knowingly 

disseminate misinformation about climate science."  

Lawrence Torcello

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Steele says:  We're only hurting our science education in that way...(see #12)... We can't just spoon feed students science and have them memorize and spit it back like propaganda.  You gotta encourage students to be critical thinkers.

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Be serious, students are in school to learn the fundamentals of the world around them.  High school and early college is about teaching skills, such as mathematical, scientific fundamentals, critical thinking, learning and communication skills - you know the tools required for the advanced learning that's required before one can judge experts and seasoned professionals.

Just like with your running skills, first you needed to learn to sit up and crawl, only then could you put weight on those legs and begin first tentative stubbles until you learned the tricks of the trade.  Then, only after many years of learning and development were you finally able to beat your dad in a race.  And only then were you finally poised to take that skill on to further levels of achievement.  Brain development is not so different.

What makes you think students can or should sit in judgmental "debate" on their professors?  Were you a Maoist back in da day and missed the bulletin about what a disaster the Great Leap Forward was?

As for critical thinking, keep an open mind but not so open that your brain falls out, 
or to frame it more constructively I'll rely on an expert Robert Ennis PhD :

The Nature of Critical Thinking: 

Outlines of General Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities 

Robert H. Ennis  2013

http://faculty.education.illinois.edu/rhennis/

http://www.criticalthinking.net/longdefinition.html

"Critical thinking is "reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do." This definition (or concept) of critical thinking I believe captures the core of the way the term is ordinarily used by supporters of critical thinking. In deciding what to believe or do, one is helped by the employment of a set of critical thinking dispositions and abilities (which is a conception of critical thinking) that I outline in detail below. ..."

"... For the sake of brevity, clarification in the form of examples, qualifications, and more detail, including more criteria, are omitted, but can be found in sources listed below, including "Critical Thinking: A Streamlined Conception" (1991b), "A Taxonomy of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities" (1987a), and "A Conception of Rational Thinking" (1980), but more fully in Critical Thinking (1996a).  See Note 1. ... "

CRITICAL THINKING DISPOSITIONS

Ideal critical thinkers are disposed to 

1. Seek and offer clear statements of the thesis or question

2. Seek and offer clear reasons

3. Try to be well informed

4. Use credible sources and observations, and usually mention them

5. Take into account the total situation

6. Keep in mind the basic concern in the context

7. Be alert for alternatives

8. Be open-minded

    a. Seriously consider otherpoints of view 

    b. Withhold judgment when the evidence and reasons

       are insufficient

9. Take a position and change a position when the evidence

       and reasons are sufficient

10. Seek as much precision as the nature of the subject admits

11. Seek the truth when it makes sense to do so, and more broadly, try to "get it right" to the extent possible or feasible

12. Employ their critical thinking abilities and dispositions