He then criticises this because of the scriptural argument's evident circularity. Yet the problem with his argument can be found by a consideration of his earlier section. This is a straw man argument. Paul was not talking about this letter when he said the scripture was inspired by God. He was writing instruction to Timothy, but he was not saying this line was true because it was true. Rather he was making a statement about why he believed all the scripture as would be understood by his reader (Timothy) was profitable for those things. What Grimes asserts is simply poor exegesis. He has not understood the argument in context before he has leapt to the application, and there are plenty of books on doing Biblical exegesis that make that exact point. I can definitely recommend this book to anyone, including anti-vaccine activists and climate change denialists. Although I am pretty sure that they will continue following their "faith" and they will not open their personal boundaries to change their views. But we are not our views and we are not our thoughts. They simply come and go and they can be changed on the basis of evidence and experience. This book also offers us a reminder of the human cost when sinister narratives take hold in a nation's psyche and when you isolate and dehumanize certain groups, the next step of elimination is not far off. He has some valuable insights into the mobbing and shaming brigade on social media, and how the act of wielding a pitchfork does not make one heroic. For me, the challenge was the approach on electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) which I found very convincing in TV reporting. Then, Grimes observes: Sometimes his anecdotes were perhaps too abbreviated. There were a few times when I thought more could be said than he did say (although no doubt he was aiming for brevity). This was particularly the case when he gives the number of Chernobyl caused deaths as 43. His point is quite right (the number of deaths is much lower than people think, and many more people die from pretty much every other means of generation), but he fails to mention the estimates that excess deaths caused by the disaster are expected to reach 4,000. Because these are cancer deaths, many of them have not happened yet, but as people get older, if they die of cancer it *may* be the result of Chernobyl, and although we cannot say for any one person if this was so, the expected number of excess deaths will probably be in the region of 4,000. Still much safer than coal based generation, and many other means of electrical generation - but not immaterial.

This is a standout example of what David Robert Grimes describes as flawed logic, and how it puts us at real risk. The author has set himself the not inconsiderable task of unravelling the many tangled ways in which we deceive ourselves and one another. One possible solution? Learning to think like scientists. Humans, of course, are not computers, but something else entirely. While we are capable of incredibly deep thought, we also rely on instinctive techniques to make rapid decisions. For instance, we might gauge whether something is a threat based on its similarity to known threats. Such rules of thumb are known as heuristics and are hardwired into us. These short cuts are not always optimal, or even correct, but are regularly ‘good enough’ for most situations and don’t use up vast amounts of relatively expensive cognition. Most importantly, they happen so instinctively that we’re rarely even aware of the thought processes leading us to certain conclusions. This impulse has served us well, keeping us alive through millennia of prehistory, where rapid decisions were often a matter of life or death.

There's nothing new or groundbreaking here, but Follow evidence, think critically is an important message that can't be repeated too often. Grimes covers: Watch: David Robert Grimes took part in a debate about mandatory vaccinations on RTÉ One's Prime Time last April Why did revolutionary China consider the sparrow an 'animal of capitalism' - and what happened when they tried to wipe them out? With a cast of murderous popes, snake-oil salesmen and superstitious pigeons, find out why flawed logic puts us all at risk, and how critical thinking can save the world. Imagine being told that steel is lighter than air. You’d object, surely – were that true, steel would be ethereal enough to hover, scattering like dandelion seeds in the wind. Without performing a single measurement, we know this can’t be. Our cars don’t have to be anchored, nor do battleships behave like balloons. If we accepted the claim, it would lead to untenable contradictions with what we observe. The resulting absurdity means we confidently reject it. This is the essence of reductio ad absurdum (reduction to the absurd), where premises are disproven because they give rise to insurmountable contradiction. In this respect, contradictions are supremely useful, a warning sign that we’ve erred in our assumptions or reasoning. The great mathematician G. H. Hardy described them as ‘a far finer gambit than any chess gambit: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game’. ⁴ While many so-called cure-alls may be harmless, some are not and at the darker end of things, they may encourage people to stay away from necessary medical intervention. Remember Steve Jobs?

From that sea of anger, 9/11 myths underwent dramatic amplification. In 2003 I was 17, on the cusp of university and, like so many others, I joined protests against the war that was to ensue. Starting college that autumn, I remember vividly a fellow student who held an audience rapt, joining the dots between all manner of events. In his telling, the towers came down in a controlled explosion, a pretext to the invasion of Iraq. Osama bin Laden was a US agent, Saddam Hussein an innocent scapegoat under whom the Iraqi people thrived but whose oil America needed. This student emissary was in no way unique – such narratives played out verbatim to receptive audiences the world over. It seemed so appealingly clean, explanatory and reassuring. But for all these attributes, such stories were and remain utter nonsense, readily disassembled by even cursory familiarity with the evidence. I thought the explanation of model evaluation needed more work. (I knew the topic and still had trouble following the explanation.) Thanks to the credulous and frankly deplorable conduct of many press outlets, Wakefield’s dubious message spread far and wide,” Grimes states. Three wholly avoidable measles deaths in Dublin and others permanently scarred were some of the victims of this anti-science scaremongering. Last year, there were more than 82,000 cases of measles in Europe. We may not have to save the planet from nuclear annihilation, of course, but our ability to think critically has never been more important . In a world where fake news , mistrust of experts , prejudice and ignorance all too often hold sway, we can all too easily be misled over issues such as vaccinations , climate change or conspiracy theories . We live in an era where access to all the knowledge in the world is at our fingertips, yet that also means misinformation and falsehoods can spread further and faster than ever before. The conclusion here is inferred from a statement when there are no grounds to do so. There are myriad reasons an innocent person might not defend themselves. Perhaps they’re protecting someone or refusing to recognise a corrupt court. Perhaps they’re simply exceptionally dead, as was the case with Formosus. This logical fallacy is denying the antecedent, or the inverse error. Just because X implies Y (‘an innocent man would defend himself’), it is mistaken to assume the absence of X implies the absence of Y (‘Formosus did not defend himself, thus he is guilty’). Despite a superficial logical veneer, it is intrinsically flawed. Greek scholars demonstrated the perils of the inverse error in antiquity, but that hasn’t stopped it being dubiously employed in subsequent centuries by those who should know better, as Pope Stephen exemplified.Good Thinking” by Grimes, an Irish physicist, cancer researcher and science journalist, is an easy-to-read explanation of common sources of bias, logical fallacies and motivated reasoning, fallacies of argument and devious rhetorical techniques, conspiracy theories and related tribal thinking, misuse of statistics, the Dunning-Kruger effect, limits of our senses and of memory, false equivalency, “cargo cult science”, and the harmful role of social and mass media, among other things. And he points out that these problems are hardly new in our society. It’s just that social media have exacerbated them. I thought the author was an equal-opportunity criticizer, politically, although it’s almost impossible to talk about conspiracy theories without bringing in people who are associated with the “right wing” in this country. To his credit, he does come up with several "left" examples as well. Why did revolutionary China consider the sparrow an 'animal of capitalism' - and what happened when they tried to wipe them out? With a cast of murderous popes, snake-oil salesmen and superstitious pigeons, find out why flawed logic puts us all at risk, and how critical thinking can save the world. This question has captivated inquisitive minds for centuries – early Greek philosophers dedicated huge amounts of time to exploring the structure of logic. Their discoveries remain the very foundation of mathematical logic. This fundamental area has extreme practical application as well as theoretical elegance, underpinning everything from search engines to space flight, pizza delivery to emergency services. The rigours of logic are not just a niche area for scholars and engineers; it is the very basis of the rhetorical arguments that we encounter every day and the tools we use to reach conclusions on every imaginable issue. While outlandish, the logic is valid; accepting the premises means the conclusion follows. Clearly, valid logical syntax alone isn’t enough; for a deductive argument to be sound, the logic must be valid and the premises must be true. With these straightforward examples, it’s tempting to assume that gauging soundness is simple. Alas, this isn’t always the case – as with all things, the devil resides in the detail. Formal fallacies are rudimentary errors in the logical structure of an argument, which render that argument invalid. Some can be surprisingly opaque, embedded in cunning demagogic oratory. Let’s return to the scheming Pope Stephen’s argument against his deceased predecessor:

We live in a polarised world, with many of the old certainties no longer viewed as such. Misinformation, untruths and viral propaganda can speed around the world, with such velocity now, via social media and the internet, that facts have a very hard time keeping pace. He quotes the late Carl Sagan as observing: “We’ve arranged a global civilisation in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.” Fingertip falsehoods Grimes is a science journalist and communicator. He undertakes here to battle the epidemic of misinformation--both the malicious and the unintentional--that is sweeping the world, by educating the reader on the fundamentals of reason and rational thought. Essential reading about our irrational minds for post-truth society. This book covers conspiracy, disinformation and propaganda using various real-life stories from 9/11 truth seekers to climate change denialists and various methods of information filtering from unbalanced newspaper coverage to polarised social networks.Getting people to reconsider core beliefs is exceedingly difficult. “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired,” as Jonathan Swift wryly observed. Reality, the author points out, is ultimately uninterested in our prejudices and egos. Here, he aims a swipe at “contrarian writers and broadcasters who paint themselves as ‘sceptics’ on issues such as climate change or vaccination”. We may not have to save the planet from nuclear annihilation, of course, but our ability to think critically has never been more important. In a world where fake news, mistrust of experts, prejudice and ignorance all too often hold sway, we can all too easily be misled over issues such as vaccinations, climate change or conspiracy theories. We live in an era where access to all the knowledge in the world is at our fingertips, yet that also means misinformation and falsehoods can spread further and faster than ever before. Our capacity to reason is the clearest hallmark of being human. We are reflective animals, blessed with metacognition to be aware of that fact. Each one of us wrestles with concepts both abstract and tangible, learning from the past and pre-empting the future. And underpinning it all is our ability to reason, a spark that illuminates even the darkest reaches. But for all the impressive feats of which our brain is capable, it isn’t an infallible machine and we frequently make mistakes both obvious and subtle. Psychologists Richard E. Nesbitt and Lee Ross remarked of this glaring contradiction that ‘one of philosophy’s oldest paradoxes is the apparent contradiction between the great triumphs and the dramatic failures of the human mind. The same organism that routinely solves inferential problems too subtle and complex for the mightiest computers often makes errors in the simplest of judgements about everyday events.’ Despite that, I think sometimes the author's biases popped up in the work. I wonder if, considering his excoriating description of Trump's duplicitous scrabble for power, whether this would put some readers off reading his summary (even though I think he was quite right about Trump). Trusted sources are needed now, more than ever. Science has certainly has had its failings in the past. One only needs to think about Eugenics, or claims that an examination of people’s faces or brain scans can tell if someone is going to be a criminal or not, and of course history is littered with unethical experiments on people.

Slaying these myths is a Sisyphean task; new ones arise hydra-like to take the place of the fallen one. As sociologist Ted Goertzel observed: ‘When an alleged fact is debunked, the conspiracy meme often just replaces it with another fact.’ The converse error is a shield against the imposition of reality, a totem to preserve belief, no matter how strongly evidence weighs against it. Enduring beliefs in grand scientific conspiracies are an interesting case in point – many believe that the pharmaceutical industry covers up cures for cancer, for example, or that climate change is a hoax perpetuated by scientists; 7 per cent of Americans believe the moon landings were faked, and many more suspect vaccination is some sinister government ploy. In these narratives, the common thread is that scientists are complicit in mass deception. Anyone who’s spent any time around scientists will no doubt find this amusing, as trying to get scientists to agree is often vaguely akin to herding cats. This prompted me to do my own research. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is not a valid diagnosis as caused by recognized by electromagnetic field according to any legitimate medical organization, as far as I can tell. There have been studies done on people claiming to be sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. A study conducted for the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority found that people who claim to be EMF-sensitive have physical symptoms, however the symptoms are not correlated with exposure to EMF radiation and may occur because of the conscious expectation of such symptoms. Even if it were possible to be sensitive to electromagnetic radiation, it would be impossible for symptoms to be triggered by cell phone signals, or nearby power lines. So, this confirmation further impressed me with the sagacity of Grimes' observations. Why did revolutionary China consider the humble sparrow an "animal of capitalism", and what was the unintended consequence of their audacious plan to wipe them out?The book points out that while conspiracies undoubtedly occur, keeping large ones secret for long is nigh on impossible. In our interconnected world, it’s even harder to keep things under wraps. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering's alleged statement ('When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun') to the frequent use of such expressions as 'degenerate intellectuals', 'eggheads', 'effete snobs', 'universities are a nest of reds'." Humanity's real problem is that we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology." If one in 10,000 suffer from an illness, and the test is 99.99 per cent accurate – what are the odds that a positive result means one has the disease? Each chapter is readable in 25 minutes and concerns a different source of flawed thinking. The language is easy. Grime’s gives explicit examples and pulls no punches, naming notable charlatans, celebrity influencers, homeopaths, scientists on the make, talking “nobody could possibly take my words seriously” heads, anti-vaxxers, etc. Some of the examples were eye-opening. I learned a wonderful new word – “ultracrepidarian”, which I have been applying silently as I read posts on-line.