Critical Thinking in Medicine and Health

Abstract

Chapter 1 • Critical Thinking in Medicine and Health 1 LEARNING OBJECTIVES: Readers of this chapter will 5 appreciate the range of mundane contexts in which we are exposed to medical information and health messages. 5 understand the different responses that people have to health messages, ranging from indifference and denial to a high level of critical engagement with the content of messages. 5 appreciate the need for robust critical thinking skills in medicine and health in order to expose logical errors and conflicts of interest in the health messages we see and hear, participate in sound decision-making about one's own health, and reduce or eliminate medical errors that put patients at risk of death or serious injury. 5 have knowledge of what an informal fallacy is and understand that labels such as 'valid' and 'fallacious' are not inherent properties of arguments but apply only to arguments in certain contexts of use. 5 understand the logical tradition that surrounds the fallacies, from Aristotle's challenge to the deceptive or false refutations traded by sophists to present-day pragmatic and cognitive analyses of the fallacies.