Deck 6: Case Studies in the Extraordinary

Question 1

Dowsing is

A) waterboarding.
B) deep sea diving.
C) using a divining rod to discover hidden objects.
D) putting out a fire.

Answer 1

using a divining rod to discover hidden objects.

Question 2

According to the text, the best explanation of why people believe they have been abducted by aliens is that

A) they have been abducted by aliens.
B) they are suffering from mental illness.
C) they are perpetrating a hoax.
D) they have excessive activity in the temporal lobes of their brains.

Answer 2

they have excessive activity in the temporal lobes of their brains.

Question 3

According to the text, the best explanation of why some people experience ghosts is that

A) they are suffering from sleep paralysis.
B) they have come in contact with a disembodied spirit.
C) they have encountered abnormal environmental conditions.
D) they have tapped into information stored in the stones of buildings or outcroppings.

Answer 3

they have encountered abnormal environmental conditions.

Question 4

According to the text, the best explanation of why some people have out of body experiences when they are near-death experiences is

A) their soul leaves their body.
B) there are suffering from abnormal neuron firing patterns in their brains.
C) they are reliving the birth experience.
D) they are suffering from sleep paralysis.

Question 5

According to the text, the best explanation of climate change is

A) natural variation in the Earth's warming and cooling.
B) the use of fossil fuels.
C) the variation in the sun's energy output.
D) that the claim of climate change is a hoax.

Question 6

Which isNOT a criterion of adequacy?

A) simplicity
B) scope
C) scale
D) conservativism

Question 7

What is the SEARCH formula?

Question 8

Hundreds of thousands of people use homeopathic remedies. Does this fact alone show that homeopathy works?

Question 9

How much weight would you give to the evidence for UFO abductions and why?

Question 10

The UFO-abduction hypothesis is not a very simple explanation because it involves some unsupported assumptions. What are these assumptions?

Question 11

In what ways is the communication with the dead hypothesis much less conservative than the competing hypotheses?

Question 12

What is the best explanation for near-death experiences? Why is it best?

Question 13

The best explanation is the one that does best with regard to the criteria of adequacy.

Question 14

When evaluating a hypothesis or theory, you must always look at more than just fit with the data.

Question 15

The simplest hypothesis is always the best.

Question 16

Homeopathic remedies have been clinically proven to be effective.

Question 17

According to homeopathy, the smaller dose, the more powerful the medicine.

Question 18

According to the text, the best explanation of why some people feel better after taking homeopathic medicine is the placebo effect.

Question 19

According to the text, the best explanation of why dowsers' diving rods move is that the they are being pulled on by radiation from underground.

Question 20

There is no other way to explain the fact that people believe they have been abducted by aliens than by acknowledging that they have been abducted by aliens.

Question 21

According to the text, the best explanation of the Roswell crash is that it was part of the top-secret Project MOGUL that tried to monitor Soviet nuclear tests.

Question 22

The best explanation of why people seem to see ghosts is that there are such things as ghosts.

Question 23

It's simpler to assume that people who claim to have an out of body experience have actually left their bodies than to assume their brain is playing tricks on them.

Question 24

People often accept conspiracy theories because they believe that big events require big causes.