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Post #10 Critical Thinking Process Responses (Video)

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Post #10 Critical Thinking Process Responses (Video)

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We chose to evaluate the video

"Inside a Flat Earth convention, where nearly everyone believes Earth isn't round"

Extraordinary Claim : The majority of people in this video believe that the earth is a flat surface, and not a sphere.

Gather Information : Mark Sargent has no credible credentials to prove his claims of the earth being flat. Most of the information being provided my Mark is just regurgitation of some other person's words that he truly feels are true.

Evaluate Evidence : This video was made by ABC, and it does not support the theory of flat earth being true, but is more of a confirmation bias that the earth is round.
Moreover, the fact of the matter is that there is no scientific evidence, or conclusive studies that can point in direction of flat earth being a possibility, as shared from the video.

Recognize Assumptions, Emotions, Biases: Most of the flat earthers shown in the video are all very deep believers in the flat earth theory. It is clear that the group of them like to reaffirm their beliefs through confirmation bias, meeting in large groups so they can all confirm their beliefs with one another. Furthermore, by surrounding themselves in people with common ideas, they are only strengthening the beliefs they have.

Synthesize Evidence, Identify Alternatives: The best alternative I believe in this case would be to really show the flat earth believers actual evidence with their own eyes that the earth is round. This could be trips to a museums or even presentations from older astronauts. This will provide the flat earthers actual physical proof, since most of them will not believe until they see it with their own eyes.

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Inside a Flat Earth convention, where nearly everyone believes Earth isn't round

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Post #9 Reason for Belief : Emotional Connection (Video)

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Post #9 Reason for Belief : Emotional Connection (Video)

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Definition : Emotions are hard to control for some people, and can often blur reasoning and stray our rational thoughts as well.

Connection : In this video, we have the social movement BlackLivesMatter. People who support/apart of this movement are usually invested emotionally. For the most part, it is affected family members and friends speaking out for what they believe. In some cases however, the emotions portrayed by these people can become extreme/especially when it comes to results from the justice system. Moreover, protests have gone wild many times between police and citizens because of the strength of the peoples emotions for the cause they're fighting for.

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#BlackLivesMatter: A Look Into The Movement's History | Long Story Short | NBC News

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Post #8 Reason for Belief : Patternicity (Image)

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Post #8 Reason for Belief : Patternicity (Image)

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Definition : Humans tend to naturally look for patterns everyday in things that naturally have no meaning or need for having a pattern in it.

Connection : In this image, patternicity would cause one to believe that some higher being is opening the sky. To believers of christian faith they could see this as God opening up heaven.

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Post #7 Reason for Belief:  Agenticity (Website)

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Post #7 Reason for Belief:  Agenticity (Website)

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Definition : People want to believe in some different type of being or "agent", usually assigning that title to a god, aliens, conspiracies, angels, and more invisible beings.

Connection : The Denver Airport conspiracy has been around since the airport itself was built. Many people believe that there is a hidden purpose to the construction of airport, some surrounding the flat earth theory. There are beliefs that the true purpose of the airport is actually a large concentration/containment camp, others believe that it is linked to the one world government. Moreover, odd art work within the airport itself and odd phenomenons in the area lead people to believe that their is a hidden purpose to this international airport.

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Denver Airport conspiracy theories - RationalWiki

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Denver International Airport ( DIA, also known by its IATA code "DEN" or ICAO code "KDEN") has accreted a collection of conspiracy theories. These theories most commonly claim that DIA is a new, secret (?) headquarters or compound used by the Illuminati, New World Order, Neo-Nazis, or Reptoids.

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Post #6 Red Flag : Suppressed by Authorities (Website)

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Post #6 Red Flag : Suppressed by Authorities (Website)

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Definition: Suppressed by Authorities focuses on the claims that higher authorities, such as the governments or big corporations, are keeping information secret to benefit from it their own.

Connection : The cure for cancer has been said to be covered up and kept secret from Pharmaceutical companies and the government to continue profiting off of the different and expensive treatments for cancer patients. As they are keeping it a secret, the government would be able to shut down anyone who would try and reveal their intentions and such by any means necessary, and continue to profit from not giving out the antidote for the cure as believed. While there are many that do believe this theory, there are also a lot of others within the field and around it that do say that its just based on mistrust and would be considered a medical genocide if it was actually happening when trying to deny the theory.

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You've probably heard this conspiracy theory before, maybe from your uncle who still has his doubts about the Apollo 11 moon landing, or on a Reddit thread exposing the evils of "Big Pharma." It goes like this: A cure for cancer exists, but pharmaceutical companies - and perhaps even government health agencies and cancer charities - are suppressing it because they make so much money from treating the disease or fundraising for it.

In other words, a secret cabal of pharma execs, scientific researchers and cancer nonprofits are letting more than 8 million people die each year worldwide so they can line their pockets with cancer money. Such a plot, if true, would be nothing short of medical genocide.

Ted Gansler is strategic director for pathology research with the American Cancer Society (ACS) where he serves as editor of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Gansler heard the "hidden cure" story so many times that he actually went out and conducted a survey in 2002 about the most common misconceptions about cancer. In it, he asked nearly 1,000 Americans if they believed there was a conspiracy to hide a cancer cure.

"The result was even more shocking than I expected," Gansler writes in an email, reporting that 27.3 percent believed the myth and another 14.3 percent were uncertain. "The 'secret cancer cure' is a typical conspiracy theory. Although its popularity is caused partly by ignorance, misunderstanding, and mistrust of science, psychological research indicates that inventing and spreading conspiracy theories is a way for some people to cope with feelings of vulnerability."

Cancer is scary, and few of our lives have been untouched by its devastating reach. But just because the medical establishment hasn't yet found a blockbuster cure for all cancer doesn't mean that they're hiding it from us.

The Money Angle

As Cancer Research UK wrote in a post addressing 10 persistent cancer myths, if Big Pharma indeed had its hands on a cure, even one based on generic drugs or cheap alternatives, it could figure out a way to package the molecules into a patentable therapy that would still make them loads of money. People pay thousands of dollars for cancer treatments currently. Wouldn't they pay even more for a cure if it existed?

Then there's the raw fact that pharmaceutical executives, researchers and government officials - and their families - are not immune to cancer.

"Can any conspiracy be so complete that oncologists and even world leaders would be willing to die of cancer in order to protect the alleged secret?" asks Gansler.

Many Cancers Already Have High Survival Rates

But perhaps the most compelling reason why the "hidden cure" conspiracy is false is that there simply could never be one single cure for cancer, because cancer is not one thing. Under the umbrella of "cancer" are hundreds of related diseases that vary substantially in their causes and underlying mechanisms. And even the same type of cancer can "evolve" in unique ways among individuals, requiring different treatment regimens for different patients.

The reality is that there are some cancers, when caught early, that now have long-term survival rates of 70 percent or higher, notes Gansler. These include breast cancer, prostate cancer, urinary bladder cancer and melanoma of the skin. "Unfortunately," he adds, "some kinds of cancer are very resistant to all of the treatments that have been studied so far."

While the "hidden cure" conspiracy is absolutely false, it's worth asking if the current approaches for funding cancer research and drug development are the best ways to find effective and affordable cures for both common and rare forms of cancer.

The 2017 budget of the National Cancer Institute, for example, a leading funder of scientific and medical research in the U.S., was $5.69 billion. Even though the dollar amount earmarked for the NCI goes up slightly each year, its true value with inflation has gone down consistently since 2003. The NCI usually partners with pharmaceutical companies or universities to conduct clinical trials.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health also set aside nearly $6 billion in its 2017 budget for cancer research, with additional funds invested in specific categories like cancer genomics, breast cancer, cervical cancer and childhood leukemia.

But those public investments are chump change compared to private pharmaceutical companies, which are funneling an estimated $50 billion annually into cancer drug research and development.

Big Pharma and the Search

The imbalance between private and public funding of cancer research has led some critics to argue that Big Pharma is actually slowing the search for a cancer cure by focusing so much money on developing patentable, single-drug treatments rather than testing combination therapies or exploring the repurposing of existing cheaper generic drugs, like even aspirin (see sidebar).

Eugene Brown is a scientific adviser for Global Cures, a nonprofit organization that helps cancer patients find evidence-based therapies that are outside of the typical "standard of care." Those include the use of supplements or generic medications that have shown promise in speeding recovering or alleviating side effects of chemo and radiation.

Global Cures also advocates for research that repurposes existing drugs and FDA-approved compounds not originally created for cancer treatment, an approach that's often ignored by for-profit pharmaceutical companies and underfunded by government agencies.

Brown disagrees that Big Pharma is the biggest problem preventing us from finding cancer cures and says that expecting pharmaceutical companies to invest in drug repurposing is equivalent to forcing a square peg through a round hole.

"There should be more collaboration where government and public institutions and charitable organization see this as an important goal. And in fact, Big Pharma can be incorporated into the whole scheme," he says.

He notes that a repurposed drug would need a clinical trial in order to be prescribed for cancer, and a pharmaceutical company could provide that either free of charge or at cost as a gesture of goodwill.

Last editorial update on Jun 8, 2018 11:27:37 am.

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You've probably heard this conspiracy theory before, maybe from your uncle who still has his doubts about the Apollo 11 moon landing, or on a Reddit thread exposing the evils of "Big Pharma."

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Post #5 Red Flag : Confirmation Bias (Website)

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Post #5 Red Flag : Confirmation Bias (Website)

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Definition:  When people want to prove themselves right, they tend to remember things that only confirm what they believe or want to believe, and ignore or forget the things that contradict their beliefs.

Connection : When it comes to climate change, people either believe in the facts that have been provided, or they will look to re affirm the ideas that they believe to be true. Furthermore, on r/climatechange of reddit, you will see many examples of people using confirmation bias, to disprove the idea that climate change is a imminent danger that should be addressed. Moreover, you will find many articles on this subreddit that are bias towards people who do not believe in global warming.

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Post #4 Red Flag: Mystical Energy (Image)

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Post #4 Red Flag: Mystical Energy (Image)

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Definition : Where the emotions and more can not be explained, it is believed that through crystals,aura, chi, and more, energy can be found and stored.

Connection : Healing crystals have always been something that people believed in throughout history, but even so recently with the new western generations. While it has appeared not only on shows, but in the media via influential figures as well, from David Beckham and his wife, to Katy Perry and more, these stones that are believed to grant the user with a certain trait that belongs to it, show those who are being advertised it that they have a special energy within them that allow ones life to be changed for the greater good, and whatever problem you have, there will always be a crystal to counter it, something everyone wants to relax and believe that they can rely on.

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Post #3 Red Flag: Ancient Wisdom (Website)

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Post #3 Red Flag: Ancient Wisdom (Website)

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Definition : The use of products, medicines, knowledge and practices or other items that were used from people in ancient civilizations. They were things of the past and can not work now or else have been replaced by better methods.

Connection : Himalayan Pink Salt is said to have many benefits for the body when being used, and has been used for centuries in the middle east, primarily Pakistan as an item to treat illnesses, and relieve the body of its pains. While people now do believe that pink salt does have benefits for the body, there are facts proving that it is just the same as table salt with no differences between the two, and also shows that the Iodine intake is less in Pink salt compared to table salt.

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Pink Himalayan salt is a type of rock salt from the Punjab region of Pakistan, near the foothills of the Himalayas.

Some people describe pink Himalayan salt as one of the purest salts available, and say it boasts several health benefits.

But does this salt earn its place among the "healthier" salts? This article explores the possible benefits of this exotic salt.

What is pink Himalayan salt?

People claim that pink Himalayan salt is healthier than regular salt.

Pink Himalayan salt is chemically similar to table salt. It contains up to 98 percent sodium chloride.

The rest of the salt consists of trace minerals, such as potassium, magnesium, and calcium. These give the salt its light pink tint.

These minerals also explain why Himalayan salt tastes different from regular table salt.

How is it used?

People use this type of salt and common table salt in the same way: As part of cooking, to season meals, and to preserve food.

Blocks of pink salt sometimes become serving dishes, cooking surfaces, and cutting boards. Some people also use pink Himalayan salt in place of bath salts. It is also possible to buy lamps and candleholders made of pink salt.

Why does the body need salt?

Sodium is an essential trace mineral found in salt. The body needs this for a variety of functions.

It can support:

contracting and relaxing muscles

maintaining proper fluid balance and preventing dehydration

sending nervous system impulses

preventing low blood pressure

Recent research has suggested that eating salt can reduce the risk of infection and kill harmful bacteria.

One study on animals has also led researchers to infer that salt may have a positive effect on symptoms of depression.

Benefits and myths

There are several claims about the health benefits associated with pink salt consumption. These include:

Rich mineral content

Some sources say that pink Himalayan salt contains up to 84 different trace minerals.

As it contains up to 98 percent sodium chloride, this means that only around 2 percent is made up of these various trace minerals. Given the relatively limited quantities in which people normally consume salt, and the tiny quantity of these minerals in the salt, they are unlikely to provide any measurable or significant health benefits.

Lower sodium

Some people believe that pink Himalayan salt is lower in sodium than regular table salt. However, both types consist of approximately 98 percent sodium chloride.

As pink salt often has larger crystals than table salt, it technically contains less sodium per teaspoon. It also has a saltier flavor than table salt, meaning that a person can use less salt in a serving to achieve the same taste.

However, pink salt is also available in a smaller granule size that more closely resembles regular salt. Consider this when seasoning food and measuring sodium intake.

The American Heart Association (AHA) advises that over 75 percent of sodium intake comes from the salt already present in processed and prepared foods. Table salt does not add the bulk of sodium content to a meal.

A more natural salt

Some claim that Himalayan salt is more natural than table salt. This claim appears to have merit.

Table salt is usually heavily refined and mixed with anti-caking agents to prevent clumping, such as sodium aluminosilicate or magnesium carbonate,

Himalayan salt is less artificial and does not usually contain additives.

An aid to hydration

Some believe that adding a pinch of pink salt to meals or drinks can help the body achieve optimal fluid balance and prevent dehydration.

It is true that sodium is necessary to maintain proper fluid balance. However, this is true of sodium from other sources as well as pink Himalayan salt.

Risks and considerations

Bear the following points in mind if using pink Himalayan salt:

Iodine intake

Iodine supports the thyroid glands. Pink salt contains less iodine that table salt and is less suitable for people with iodine deficiency.

Iodine is a mineral that the body needs for maintaining proper thyroid function and cell metabolism. Great sources of iodine include fish, sea vegetables, dairy, and eggs, among other foods.

Iodized salt is another common source of this trace mineral. Approximately 75 percent of households in the United States use iodized salt.

Although pink Himalayan salt may naturally contain some iodine, it most likely contains less iodine than iodized salt. Therefore, those who have iodine deficiency or are at risk of deficiency may need to source iodine elsewhere if using pink salt instead of table salt.

Sodium intake

Although sodium is necessary for preserving life, it is important to monitor the intake of any type of salt. While sodium is necessary in small quantities, too much can have a negative impact on health.

Those with kidney, heart, or liver issues, or people on a sodium-restricted diet, should monitor their sodium intake and limit their use of all salt, including pink Himalayan salt.

Even people in good health should monitor sodium intake. A 2016 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that over 90 percent of children and 89 percent of adults consume more than the recommended amount of sodium.

Too much sodium

The 2015 to 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that people eat less than 2,300 milligrams (mg) of sodium daily. This equates to approximately 1 teaspoon of regular table salt per day.

Those that have high blood pressure should limit sodium intake to 1500 mg per day. Speak with a dietitian to determine dietary changes that can be made to limit sodium intake.

Salt contains 40 percent sodium. When being conscious of sodium intake, it can be helpful to know how much sodium is in certain amounts of salt.

Certain quantities of salt contain the following amounts of sodium:

1/4 teaspoon salt: 575 mg sodium

1/2 teaspoon salt: 1,150 mg sodium

3/4 teaspoon salt: 1,725 mg sodium

1 teaspoon salt: 2,300 mg sodium

Most people consume much more than this.

When people take in more sodium than they need, their kidneys try to remove the excess through the urine. If the kidneys cannot remove enough sodium, it begins to build up in the fluid between cells, known as the interstitial fluid.

This causes both water volume and blood volume to increase, putting additional strain on the heart and blood vessels.

A number of serious health conditions are linked to high sodium intake, including:

Consuming too much salt might even contribute to autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and psoriasis, as it overstimulates the immune system.

Research from 2015 suggests a direct link between salt intake and obesity, with a 1-g-per-day increase in salt intake being linked to an increase of over 25 percent in the risk of obesity in both adults and children.

The bottom line

At present, there is no scientific evidence to show that pink Himalayan salt provides more health benefits than regular table salt.

Replacing fine-grain table salt with crystals of pink Himalayan salt may help to reduce sodium intake, but, as with any other salt, be sure to enjoy it in moderation.

There is an excellent selection of pink Himalayan salt available to purchase online, with thousands of customer reviews.

We picked linked items based on the quality of products, and list the pros and cons of each to help you determine which will work best for you. We partner with some of the companies that sell these products, which means Healthline UK and our partners may receive a portion of revenues if you make a purchase using a link(s) above.

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Pink Himalayan salt: Does it have any health benefits?

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Pink Himalayan salt is similar to table salt, containing up to 98 percent sodium chloride. The rest is made up of trace minerals, such as potassium, magnesium, and calcium, which give the salt its tint. It may have a slightly different flavor, but can it really aid hydration?

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Post #2 Red Flag : Appeal to Authority (Picture) 

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Post #2 Red Flag : Appeal to Authority (Picture) 

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Definition: From the status one has when trying to prove a point being one higher than majority of society, people tend to believe in the person rather than their claims. Using celebrity endorsements and people of importance within society would get ones view across easier rather than using someone unknown to society as they have influence behind their words.

Connection : The picture below shows the red flag for Appeal to Authroity as it shows Jennifer Aniston, a popular figure to society to all age groups, promoting something she believes is the right thing compared to the other competotors it has. As Jennifer Aniston has been on countless T.V shows and movies, the mass amount of followers she has on her own social media and from her acting brings attention to the item shes targeting/advertising, showing how influencial she is as a figure.

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