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- Shermer's Boundary Detection Kit
- How reliable is the source of the claim?
- Has the source often made similar claims?
- Have the claims been verified by another source?
- How does this fit with what we know about the world and how it works?
- Has anyone, including and especially the claimant, gone out of the way to disprove the claim, or has only confirmatory evidence been sought?
- In the absence of clearly defined proof, does the preponderance of evidence converge to the claimant's conclusion, or a different one?
- Is the claimant employing the accepted rules of reason and tools of research, or have those been abandoned in favour of others that lead to the desired conclusion?
- Has the claimant provided a different explanation for the observed phenomena, or is it strictly a process of denying the existing explanation?
- If the claimant has proferred a new explanation, does it account for as many phenomena as the old explanation?
- Do the claimant's personal beliefs and biases drive the conclusion, or vice versa?