Critical Thinking

JONATHAN C. SMITH is a Professor of Psychology at Roosevelt University, Founding Director of the Roosevelt University Stress Institute, and Head of the Pseudoscience and Paranormal Laboratory. He has published 23 books and has written numerous articles on critical thinking, advanced relaxation and mindfulness theory and practice, stress management, and spirituality and skepticism. In 1984 he founded the Roosevelt University Stress Institute primarily to combat pseudoscience in the field. He has created classroom and online classes specifically designed to teach critical thinking skills and evaluate extraordinary claims of the paranormal.

• Acknowledgments ixPart I Introduction 11 Critical Thinking: Your Survival Kit 32 The Paranormal Spectrum 133 What’s the Harm? Why Study These Things? 25Part II The Critical Thinker’s Toolkit 474 Sources 495 Logic (Bonus: The Big Four Informal Logical Fallacies) 616 Logic and Language: Fallacies of Ambiguity 797 Science 93Part III Alternative Explanations 1158 Oddities of Nature and the World of Numbers 1179 Perceptual Error and Trickery 13510 Memory Errors 15511 The Placebo Effect 16712 Sensory Phenomena, Hallucinations, and Psychiatric Conditions 189Part IV Paranormal Challenges 21113 Claims of Extraordinary Cures 21314 From the Paranormal Sampler: Four Claims of Consequence 229Appendix A: Why Do You Believe? 255Appendix B: Belief Justification Survey 261Notes 271References 273Index 295

Select Guide Rating