Skepticism 101: How to Think like a Scientist

Not just for Scientists

Excellent review of how science knows how things work, and the limitations of the scientific method.

7 of 8 people found this review helpful

A good start to critical thinking

Would you consider the audio edition of Skepticism 101: How to Think like a Scientist to be better than the print version?

I've never seen the print version.

What did you like best about this story?

I liked each section delving more in depth with a good amount of background information.

What about Professor Michael Shermer’s performance did you like?

At the end he refers those more interested in the subject to checkout the magazine and even contact him with questions, which I've done and he responds. Even with the dumb stuff .

What did you learn from Skepticism 101: How to Think like a Scientist that you would use in your daily life?

I'm still going to get nailed with my own cognitive biases but it's always good to remind yourself that they exist which is a good way to minimize the effect.

Any additional comments?

I've read some of the books he mentions, Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World was amazing and my first introduction to his baloney detection. This started out a bit of a rehash on those themes so I expected to not learn a whole lot of new information. A few sections in and the material was much more expanded upon with more background. I'm a fan of VS Ramachandran and Oliver Sacks so if you like those books I think this is a good diversion whilst waiting for their next. I would love to see volume 2 eventually.

32 of 40 people found this review helpful

One Truely Great Course

Wow was this a great lecture! Shermer is an interesting speaker and I found it hard to stop listening. This course should be on the list of required freshmen courses for all college students. As a skeptic in training myself, this course helped equip me with some important new tools that I know I'll be able to use at home in everyday life and in business.

21 of 27 people found this review helpful

Don't be deceived, this is a great listen

I had a true since of déjà vu moment while listening to this course by Shermer until I realized he was the author of "The Believing Brain" which I read a few months ago and this course was covering much of the same ground with many of the same stories. Shermer attacks reasons for bad thinking such as via confirmation bias, availability bias, the hind sight fallacy, and others that challenge our ability to think logically like a Scientist. The Feynman quote that went something along the lines of first you must not be deceived and you are the easiest to deceive summed up the premise of the course very well.

26 of 35 people found this review helpful

Great course, the applauselines are weird

I enjoyed this course very much. The only downside to it would be the weird applause lines that occur between lectures. I believe he is in a booth recording it, which works out fine, but do they really need to pretend he is talking to people?

16 of 22 people found this review helpful

By far the worst "Great" Courses I have listened

This is the only "Great Courses" recording I have listened to that I found to be bad; indeed, it is terrible. Perhaps I am biased by being more expert in the material than I am for history or literature courses I have listened to, though I do not think that is it. Unlike the other lecturers, that delve into interesting points with a good balance of deep insight and humility, this came across more like a Malcolm Gladwell book of just-so stories and sloppy reasoning. I suppose if you are a fan of that approach, and you know absolutely nothing about scientific reasoning, you might find this worthwhile. But if you are looking for something more insightful (a genuine great course!), this is not it.

Shermer (who is a fine narrator/speaker -- credit for that) grossly oversimplifies almost everything he talks about. He gets many scientific points out-and-out wrong. He plays it well, so you might not realize that (I have studied and taught a lot of the same material for decades), which makes it all the more hazardous. I suspect this is the result of him being accustomed to talking to people who deny or do not understand the most basic principles of scientific inquiry. The problem is that he is trying to replace their simplistic view with another simplistic view, which might be fine for an airport book or a grade-school class, but this is not supposed to be one of those.

I kept listening for two reasons. The first is the delicious irony of someone who claims to be teaching about skepticism reciting simplified interpretations of the science (e.g., lab psychology experiments) as if it were indisputable truth, and that the single interpretation of the results that is convenient for his story is the only possible interpretation. The second is to get inspiration to write a book about debunking the debunkers who recite a simplified view of scientific inquiry that may indeed help protect people against utter woo (which is Shermer's mission in life) but that create a layer of more subtle problems that can be just as dangerous.

Needless to say, neither of those upsides is worth getting this listen for most people.

Some examples for those familiar with the topics: He lists many of the standard "heuristics and biases" reasons for people drawing erroneous causal conclusions. But for about half of them he describes them incorrectly. For most all of them, he asserts they are real phenomena based on one or two artificial psych experiments whose results have many possible interpretations. Some of them he spins into just-so stories about why we have that bias, which is fine, except that he presents these as facts rather than the reasonable speculations that they are. He refers to "the scientific method" even though there is no such "the", which he actually acknowledges in passing at a few points. But this does not stop him from basing most of what he says on a notion that scientific inquiry is always about following a particular script (e.g., that particular research methods trump others, or that particular statistical rules-of-thumb are natural laws rather than just a different kind of heuristic).

I suspect that Shermer has a more sophisticated understanding than he presents here. But his approach in these lectures is to infantilize the listener and present a grade-school-level lesson. Even apart from the the out-and-out errors, this is a terrible way to teach a college-level course, telling people what to think rather than exploring the topic. It is completely out of place in the "Great Courses" series.

39 of 55 people found this review helpful

Mixed

Narrator great. Basic material pretty good. Sounds more like a a personal diatribe than an educational book. there are better sources for this same information.

6 of 8 people found this review helpful

Certainly is '101'

Do not ignore this designation. This is a very basic and nearly simplistic course. It might be a good intro for a preteen or anyone completely unfamiliar with skepticism, thinking fallacies or cognitive studies. I was surprised at the sweeping generalizations in it, for instance the suggestion that all humans engage in monogamous relationships in which any infidelity would be considered amoral. He could at least recognize that this is not universally applicable.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

Everyone can find insight from the lecture

Presented in an easy to understand maner. All subjects included are of intrrest to anyone no matter your background. Having this tool available will serve well everyday.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Great simple approach to thinking about things.

this was a good yet simple course on how the author views what skeptics think. Not only himself but the various views of different skeptics, on different subjects. Good mind stimulation. Thank you

1 of 1 people found this review helpful