Critical abilities, graduate education (Biology vs. English), and belief in unsubstantiated phenomena.

Compared the responses of 96 Canadian graduate students in biology and English who were asked to read one of 3 abstracts that made a particular claim. The abstracts differed in their apparent scientific relevance, but none contained crucial, comparative, or control group type information. The Ss' readiness in recognizing that crucial information was missing was assessed. Although biology students in general required fewer cues, they did not perform significantly differently from the English students on the less scientific texts. There was a statistically significant relationship between performance on the critical abilities measure and strength of belief in paranormal phenomena. Part of the reason why people endorse belief in unsubstantiated phenomena may be a result of their critical ability skills being relatively domain specific. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)