The big idea
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Eleven lessons, five minutes
A procedure you can run on any claim that matters.
Scientific Thinking · Lesson 6
Scientific Thinking in Everyday Life
beginner⏱ 17 min · 7 cards
Try it
Run the Framework
Take a claim through the framework — "clinically proven to improve focus".
About five minutes, and far more defensible than either buying it or scoffing.
Nine steps applied to a real advertising claim.
Calibrated confidence
Not true or false
Tap each.
A useful case
Sugar and hyperactive children
Controlled studies repeatedly fail to find the effect. In blinded designs, parents who believed their child had eaten sugar rated behaviour as more hyperactive regardless of what was consumed.
Observation versus inference, confounding, blinding, and expectation — all in one belief nearly everyone holds.
Nuance
Know when not to
Think like a Maester
Demanding a trial before believing your knee hurts is not rigour, it is paralysis. The apparatus is for claims that are contested, consequential, or costly to get wrong.
Quick check
When is a truncated y-axis legitimate?
You did it
Nice work
Mark this lesson complete to track your progress.