Grain of Salt
Who makes Grain of Salt, and how
Grain of Salt is an independent reference on critical thinking, scientific skepticism, logical fallacies, cognitive bias and evaluating evidence.
A new reference at a familiar address
Grain of Salt began in 2026. The domain skepticians.com previously hosted The Skepticians, a political commentary site under different ownership. This reference is a new project with a different subject and no connection to the former owner.
Some older addresses still work and now lead to relevant pages in this reference. They do not reproduce the former political articles or constitute an archive of that site.
What you can learn here
The reference is organised around seven parts of testing a claim: recognising faulty arguments, noticing cognitive bias, understanding logical structure, weighing evidence, checking sources, reading statistics and understanding scientific method.
Each guide explains a concept, works through examples and identifies common misreadings. The aim is to help you ask a more useful next question.
Examples and illustrations
Examples use ordinary situations to make the reasoning easier to see. The new images are AI-created editorial illustrations: lenses, prisms, objects and visual metaphors. They are not photographs of real experiments or evidence for a scientific claim.
Diagrams, tables and worked examples belong to the explanations they accompany. A visual metaphor is a starting point for the subject, not a substitute for the argument.
Sources and corrections
Follow the references and links in each guide to examine the sources behind an explanation. Read the qualifications as well as the headline conclusion, and compare a source with the claim made about it.
This is an educational reference. For a decision that depends on current professional guidance, consult the relevant primary sources and qualified practitioners.
Explore the reference
A better question is a good next step.
Put it into practice