The title of this post is, among other things, a play on Kuhn’s classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The purpose of this post is to set out a collection of “quick and dirty” rules of thumb for non-specialists to be able to determine when a putative “controversy” (as reported in the press) is a genuine scientific controversy. Quick and dirty rules of thumb are the best that anyone can ever hope to achieve on this matter, because the determination of genuine versus specious controversy is inherently qualitative and deeply sensitive to context. Nevertheless, a very solid set of evaluative tools can be quickly assembled and mastered with relative ease by anyone prepared to apply logic to facts. This post is something of a “part 2” to my earlier, What is Science?

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