skeptical inquiry
Critical evidence-based examination
Skeptical inquiry is the practice of investigating claims through careful examination of evidence, logical analysis, and openness to being wrong.
The term is associated with scientific methodology and movements that scrutinize paranormal claims, alternative medicine, and pseudoscience: The magazine promotes skeptical inquiry into UFO sightings.
Unlike cynical dismissal, skeptical inquiry suspends judgment until evidence warrants a conclusion.
- experimentSystematic investigation procedure
- scientific methodStructured process for investigation
- falsifiabilitySusceptibility to disproof
- epistemologyTheory of knowledge
- extraordinary claimsStatements beyond typical belief
critical thinking · open mind · logic · heuristics · Socratic method · investigative journalism · cognitive bias · media literacy · metacognition · science communication · replication · empiricism · debunking · rationalism · hypothesis · reasoning · devil's advocate · scientific revolution
skeptical inquiryblind faith
Trust without requiring proof
dogmatism · credulity · pseudoscience · magical thinking · superstition
skeptical inquirycredulousness
Readiness to accept claims
naïveté · trustfulness · open-mindedness · suspension of disbelief · willful ignorance
skeptical inquirydivine revelation
Deity communicates to humanity
appeal to authority · doctrine · orthodoxy · sacred tradition · ancestral wisdom
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