BLA3800

1. Human sciences are "fuzzy" sciences, but they are still sciences.
An example of people thinking that some science is more important than others is the Church and science. The Church is known to oppose scientific discoveries that challenged some beliefs of the Church, or its teachings. []

2. Science requires data.
This law was broken in Michael J. Fox's testimony to the Senate in 1999. Mr. Fox was arguing that the government should double the funding for Parkinson's disease. Fox has this disease himself, and in his speech, he uses his personal experiences to justify that the funding for this disease needs to be doubled. This is evident throuhgout his argument.

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3. Science runs on careful criticism.
A prime example of scientists attacking the opinion of another scientist without clearly understanding the topic at hand would be global warming. Many politicions have commented on this problem and many have turned into skeptics. These politicions obviously do not have the appropriate knowledge to be able to make a good argument supporting their opinion, therefore, this breaks the third Barret Law.

4. Fight fire with fire, and data with data.
An easy example of this law is the doubt of people dealing with the doomsday predictions. Many people thought that the world would end in December of 2012, and many Christians objected this idea without anything to back-up their argument other than their belief in God.

5. There's power in precise terms.
My daughter of 15 comes home occassionally complaining if "sexist pigs" at her school (she describes herself as a feminest). By saying this, she is describing the guys at her high school that think that men are stronger, smarter, or just all around better then women. This is not correct, due to the fact that "sex" and "gender" are not the same thing. In this case, it would be more appropriate to say that the boys are racist to the female gender.

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6. Correlation is not causation.
One of the many cases where correlation and causation is mixed up is in the naming of the causes for war. Specifically, many historians say that one of the causes for the Civil War was the election of Abraham Lincoln. All they know is that once Lincoln was elected president, the Civil War began, so they correlated Lincoln and the start of the Civil War, when in reality, it wasn't Lincoln who disturbed people, but his actions. []

7. More of something good isn't always better.
Starbucks has many items on it's menu that claims to be "fat-free." An example of this is their Skinny Caramel Macchiato. This drink is claimed to be healthy for you, but if you look at the ingrediants, this drink actually has a lot of calories and carbohydrates. []

8. Beware the plausible, __especially__ if it works.
Many of my children's teachers have explained a new studying technique to them and claimed that it "works wonders." Their evidence of this is to simply try it yourself. What these teachers do not understand is that each child is different, which means that the technique might work for one student, but not another. This idea of simply making the child trying it themself is not an accurate way to test a technique.

9. Where there's smoke, there's smoke.
An example of a claim that someone is wrong becuase of suspicion despite a lack of evidence is examplified in this website about the speculation of Darwin's theory of evolution. []

10. Lack of evidence doesn't mean it's false.
Using the example from number 9, even though Darwin's theory is now proven, hypethetically speaking, just because the opposing persons claim that Darwin's theory is wrong does not have any evidence to support it, that does not mean that it is wrong.