Electronic Food Rap
Vol. 5 NO. 49
Bill Evers, PhD, RD and April Mason, PhD
Extension Foods and Nutrition Specialists
The reason that dubious products and theories about diet, nutrition and health are so easily sold to people is partly a result of a lack of understanding on how to evaluate what is read, heard or seen. The following review by the president of the National Council Against Health Fraud describes a book which sounds like it could go a long way in alleviating some of this lack of knowledge.
From NCAHF NEWSLETTER, September/October 1995,Vol. 18, No. 5
Book On Critical Thinking
How To Think About Weird Things: Critical Thinking For A New Age by Schick and Vaughn (Mayfield, 1995) in my view, does what no other book on critical thinking has done; it delivers! Many lament over the great need for the teaching of critical thinking. As a teacher, I have followed this concept for years, reading everything I could find on the topic, and attending seminars. Interestingly, no one has ever been certain about how to go about teaching critical thinking. Many resort to coursework in logic, but this doesn't seem to work for anyone but those who already think logically! The idea has been advanced that the best defense against bad ideas is a wide base of knowledge that enables one to have many touch points with reality. Critics say that people are os highly specialized that they can only recognize error within their own very narrow scopes. At the same time they have been taught to be open-minded. The method I have preferred is to recapitulate the order of events historically that brought humankind from primitive, prescientific (magical) thinking, through early attempts at science, and noting landmark improvements on the scientific method. Schick and Vaughn approach the problem by raising key issues, asking the basic questions, providing insightful information on the landmark cases that have driven popular beliefs, and drawing principles that can be used in making judgments in the future. The factor that wins the point time after time is that they provide the information that discredits the anecdotal cases that have given credence to new age beliefs. AS a result, readers are not only armed with guiding principles on how to think about weird things, they can explain how weird things appeared believable in the first place. I rate this book as one of the best I have ever seen. It should be required reading for every student.
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