A field guide to critical thinking
Test the claim.
Keep your curiosity.
A clearer way to think about arguments, evidence and the things we take for granted.
Something caught your attention?
Seven ways in
Start with the question in front of you.
Each section gives you a different tool. Follow the one that fits what you’re trying to understand.
New to critical thinking? Start hereLogical fallacies
Spot the fault in an argument.
Cognitive bias
Notice the shortcuts in your thinking.
Logical reasoning
See how an argument is built.
Evidence & proof
Ask what supports the claim.
Evaluating sources
Follow a claim back to its source.
Reading numbers
Look beyond the headline statistic.
Scientific method
Give an idea a fair test.
Try a different question
A change happened.
What caused it?
A shop repainted its window. Sales rose the next week. It’s a neat story — but what would help you test it?
Explore correlation and causation“Sales went up after we repainted.
The new colour must be working.”
Choose a question to see what it can tell you.
A fictional example for practising the method.A useful place to begin
Patterns worth recognising.
Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for, notice and remember the evidence that fits what you already believe, so that a claim gets tested only in ways that could confirm it.
Read the guide
Correlation vs causation
Correlation is a measured tendency for two things to vary together, and treating it as proof of cause is the commonest way a claim passes untested.
Read the guide
The straw man fallacy
The straw man fallacy is the move of replacing someone's actual claim with a weaker, distorted version of it, refuting that version, and presenting the result as a refutation of the original.
Read the guideFrom a claim to a considered answer.
Follow the argument, examine the evidence, then look at the test.