connection:
I thought this specific example was interesting because it demonstrates how anyone can display confirmation bias in some way. The author of the article is a doctor, which some would say it is unusual for a doctor to believe in paranormal activity. It is an example of confirmation bias because she believes it is a fact that the dead are trying to communicate with their living loved ones. She unfortunately lost her son, and she  describes an encounter she had with his spirit after he died. She experienced a huge degree of trauma, which enables her confirmation bias in the article, which is clear, if you believe what she is saying or you're skeptical. Her sons passing is an example of a barrier to critical thinking. 

The pseudoscience watchlist includes seven attributes. Many times, they overlap. In this post I want to focus on "convinces through faith or belief". This is when an organization or person uses religious leverage or another beliefs in order to push their own narrative or idea of the truth. 

connection
the story above is tells her personal account of having an exorcism practiced on her by older members of her religious community. She was a young woman who was new to a missionary community and although she grew up religious it was not quite like the one she found herself in at that time. She revealed to some members that she had never witnessed a miracle or heard God speaking to her, and they immediately insisted she needed to be exorcised. It was casually suggested but they were being completely serious. It was during the ceremony that the author began to feel skeptical, she described it as "a piece of her faith had dislodged" that night.  Exorcisms are a Pseudoscience and in this case, all of the people practicing it were trying to use a young woman faith to gain more control and power over her, as well to express the fact that she needed to behave and believe in certain things or she would be outcast from the group.