Carl Sagan, no livro, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (public library), tem um capítulo chamado, “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,” onde defende que os cientistas, pelo seu treino, estão equipados com um 'kit de detecção de tangas':

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

 

2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

 

 3. 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 that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.

 

4. 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, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among “multiple working hypotheses,” has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

 

5. 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. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

 

6. If whatever it is you’re explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you’ll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.

 

 7. If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) — not just most of them.

 

8. 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. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle — an electron, say — in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? 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.

 

fonte

... no que respeita à organização social da actualidade, baseada numa mistura de poder e ignorância, no que respeita ao perigo da ciência perder o controlo sobre a sua própria direcção, sobre a ascenção da crendice que parecia ter sido definitivamente vencida pelo espírito científico de prudência céptica, sobre o que é a fé na sua relação com a vida e a ciência... etc.

... para ler extra-aulas, teria ele uns vinte anos - uns na íntegra, outros excertos. Esta lista, que integra obras de filosofia, literatura, religião, biografias, clássicos, medicina, cosmobiologia, psicologia, línguas, física e astronomia, claro, explica muito da pessoa que ele era e porque é que prefiro a série Cosmos dele àquela que agora anda a passar nas TVs: é que a dele é reflexiva, encara as descobertas e avanços científicos como uma viagem da mente humana e envolve-nos [cativa-nos] nessa viagem; enquanto esta nova do Neil deGrasse Tyson é mais sobre o funcionamento, a mecânica das coisas. 

(clicar na imagem para aumentar) 

via Open Culture

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

Carl Sagan