What a waste of my time!!!

From my favorite movies..

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

As a skeptic and podcast listener I enjoyed this primer on skepticism and critical thinking. Dunning's arguments are clearly presented, and his writing skills are revealed in a concise, precise script.As an editor, I was itching to pull it into Premiere and tweak it -- tighten up some of the edits, and find ways to make it more visual. It's disturbing that Dunning does 3 or 4 stand-uppers in a row, each in different locations with different outfits, that are not relieved in some way visually. That's just too much talking-head.(Other people have criticized some factual aspects, jumping to chiropractic's defense. Read up on Simon Singh's case at http://bit.ly/2tLGI5T for better background, if you find yourself agreeing with quantumwav5. ("Look it up" indeed.))Dunning's research is impeccable, and if you listen regularly to his podcast or the SGU there will be nothing new here, but it is a good short introduction to skeptical thinking.The graphics and animation (e.g. illustrating double-blind testing) are excellent; I just wish there were more of them. Even generic visuals of pill manufacturing would be better than just looking at Dunning's face.Clearly a lot of work went into this production, and although it was probably done on a shoestring budget it is nevertheless a professional presentation that introduces the concepts of critical thinking lucidly, and without condescension. Well worth a watch at just over 40 min.

Some good points: I liked the presenter, who performed professionally and knowledgeably. It was good that major categories of flawed argument were presented in a simple and easily-accessible ways. It's always good to have another film on critical thinking, because they are so rare, relative to the nonsense that fills our TVs, cinemas, and YouTube.Some frustratingly bad points: The film lacks editing. Early on, we're presented with a musical montage of supposedly pseudo-scientific subjects, without any explanation. It goes on and on, seemingly subject to the length of the tune. And now yoga is pseudo-scientific? Well, it can be. But sometimes yoga is just yoga. There can be benefits to some behaviours, beyond any health or supernatural claims, and those claims aren't always present anyway. The presenter should have been more specific, rather than painting with a broad brush. A disappointing sequence.The film lists appeal to authority as a bad thing, and yet invokes that very same appeal when claiming science to be good. Unless we personally witness the repetition of scientific experiments to address our questions, even science ultimately comes down to trust or faith. That trust or faith may be well-placed, but for people who cannot or will not reproduce the experiments, that is all it is. And is science actually good? While I agree that science is how we learn, I disagree that there is anything necessarily good about it. Recognize that all the good things science has given us didn't come in isolation. They came with rapid global climate change, PCBs, nuclear waste, superbugs, lives lived primarily by responding to devices, and our catastrophically unsustainable way of life. I expect skeptics to be a lot more skeptical about their pro-scientific claims, and look at the full picture of where science has actually taken us. Science has been good to us. And it has also been bad. On the whole, it may have jeopardized our species' long-term survival.Beyond that, two claims in particular bothered me.One is the presenter's claim that the health industry wants to find cures. Economics and first-hand accounts seem to disagree with this. Health product corporations (by which I mean to include pharmaceutical companies, and any company working on a product or service for health) like all corporations, are required to maximize profit. It's necessarily true that in some cases, it is going to be significantly more profitable to produce a treatment than a cure.The other claim that particularly bothers me is the presenter's claim that scientific discoveries aren't buried or hoarded. I begin to wonder if he's ever signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Not all science is government-funded and open. We do know of people's corporate scientific work being suppressed, as it is considered their employer's property, even if their employer can't figure out what it is, or what to do with it. I question whether it's even possible to know what percentage of scientific work this represents.My last complaint is that the film does feel a bit like an infomercial for more products by this presenter. That's not cool. Still, all the above wasn't enough to stop from me giving it 7/10.

For what this movie sets out to achieve, I give it my highest rating. Dunning has successfully packaged the topic of critical thinking (something that is sorely lacking in this world) as a palatable and somewhat entertaining film. He focuses on the tools needed to safely navigate the sea of mis/disinformation in an effort to save people their health, money and sometimes their reputation.I find quantumway5's negative review of this film quite humorous as he misses its point completely in a struggle to cling to his blind-faith-based beliefs. Anyone who feels this movie is misleading in any way probably has a financial stake in one or more of the myths this film helps people examine more carefully and with a skeptical eye. The fact that the move is free and readily available for download also reveals the intent of its creator: to educate, enlighten and improve the lives of its audience.

Dunning takes the most obvious weaknesses of mostly blatant pseudo BS & charlatanism to make a much larger point to denounce,most importantly, very contentious yet not so easily dismissed ideas, fields & disciplines. His bit on 911 alone is worth watching this movie to see just how people like Dunning are themselves the greatest perpetrators of uncritical thinking for their simplistic-at-best familiarity with the material he criticizes, which speaks far more to his ignorance & bad research than his dropping of red herrings & red flags do for basic approach to careful examination of any idea presented in the world, new or old. Real research demands more than relying on the rejection of young fields; Dunning, by dismissing such things as meditation and, say, Chinese meridian medicine, hangs himself with particular embarrassment given the large body evidence regarding both the fact of Meridians running through the body and the effective nature of Meridian medical traditions, of which there are many.To lump together quick diet pills with Chiropractic therapy or yoga (both widely accepted because they are proved effective; look it up!) is so sloppy that I feel sorry for how big & scary his own personal Dragons are out there in the world that he has to beat them back with such blind, and uncritical, swords of fool's reason.Watch for a laugh but beware this red herring for biased scientific materialism of the worst kind! A few points for his likability and good production qualities.3 of 10 K.