Sagan writes that if the patient is asked what her scars look like, she is unable to show them because, unfortunately, they are located in the private areas of her body. Sagan concludes by asking: 'Now what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true.'Ĭontinuing with concepts relevant to the 'dragon in my garage' story, Sagan writes about a patient of John Mack who claimed to have scars on her body which were from encounters with aliens. He continues to counter every proposed physical test with a reason why the test will not work. When the visitor considers using an infrared camera to view the creature's invisible fire, Sagan explains that her fire is heatless. The visitor suggests spreading flour on the floor so that the creature's footprints might be seen, which Sagan says is a good idea, 'but this dragon floats in the air'. Sagan replies that he 'neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon'. When he persuades a rational, open-minded visitor to meet the dragon, the visitor remarks that they are unable to see the creature. Conclusions emerge from premises, and the acceptability of the premises should not be discounted or accepted because of bias.Īs an example of skeptical thinking, Sagan offers a story concerning a fire-breathing dragon who lives in his garage. He states that reason and logic would succeed once the truth were known. Wherever possible, there must be independent validation of the concepts whose truth should be proved. Skeptical thinking allows people to construct, understand, reason, and recognize valid and invalid arguments. : 27 Superstition and pseudoscience get in the way of the ability of many laypersons to appreciate the beauty and benefits of science. He says that science works much better than any other system because it has a 'built-in error-correcting machine'. Sagan shows how scientific thinking is both imaginative and disciplined, bringing humans to an understanding of how the universe is, rather than how they wish to perceive it. Sagan explains that science is not just a body of knowledge, but is a way of thinking.

Sagan states that when new ideas are offered for consideration, they should be tested by means of skeptical thinking and should stand up to rigorous questioning.

They explain methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a 1995 book by the astrophysicist Carl Sagan and co-authored by Ann Druyan, in which the authors aim to explain the scientific method to laypeople and to encourage people to learn critical and skeptical thinking.

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