# Does Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit" contain baloney of its own?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sagans-baloney-detection-kit-contain-baloney-of-its-own/188658>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [July 15, 2003, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sagans-baloney-detection-kit-contain-baloney-of-its-own/188658 "2003-07-15T14:40:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\
**Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sagans-baloney-detection-kit-contain-baloney-of-its-own/188658/41 "2003-07-17T12:12:32Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Waenara \*  
> \*\*I missed you on preview **Zeldar**.
> 
> re: astronomy and spectroscopy - this might be a concern with earth-based telescopes (but I don’t know - IANA Astronomer). But wouldn’t information from space-based telescopes help out here? Hubble? \*\*

Absolutely, and that was my main point. If we have a link in our chain of arguments (in my example, spectroscopy) on which many subsequent links rely for their “proof” then the more ways we can validate the supporting link(s) the better.

But as you probably know, even entire systems of thought (Newtonian Physics for example) get brought back to early links in the chain when subsequent discoveries render those links invalid or at least weak.

One of the main things I hope to get out of this particular debate/discussion is that Science is not a substitute for Religion. One doesn’t _believe_ in Science. One accepts that Science is based on _not believing_ but in testing and continuing to expand the knowledge base, throwing out the trash when it accumulates. Even if that tossing out includes things that had been _believed_ for centuries.

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**Author:** ![buckyogi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f17d59/32.png) [@buckyogi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/buckyogi)\
**Post date:** [July 17, 2003, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-sagans-baloney-detection-kit-contain-baloney-of-its-own/188658/42 "2003-07-17T13:48:02Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by jjimm \*  
> \*\*I’m surprised Sagan didn’t know how to pluralize “hypothesis”. \*\*

Just for the record, I have a copy of _The Demon Haunted World_ right here, and in the book the word in the section on Occam’s Razor is indeed spelled “hypotheses” (page 211). The Web site’s spelling is a typo.

Perhaps Sagan should have added “Trust the veracity of vanity Web sites at your own risk.”

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