Critical thinking : understanding and evaluating dental research / Donald Maxwell Brunette.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Reasons for studying critical thinking -- Scientific method and the behavior of scientists -- The components of a scientific paper -- Rhetoric -- Searching the dental literature -- Logic : the basics -- Introduction to abductive and inductive logic : analogy, models,and authority -- Causation -- Quacks, cranks,and abuses of logic -- Elements of probability and statistics, part 1 : discrete variables -- Elements of probability and statistics, part 2 : continuous variables -- The importance of measurement in dentistry -- Errors in measurement -- Presentation of results -- Diagnosis tools and testing -- Research strategies and threats to validity -- Observation -- Correlation and association -- Experimentation -- Experiment design -- Statistics as an inductive argument and other statistical concepts -- Judgment -- Introduction to clinical decision making -- Exercises in critical thinking.