# Occam's Broom The molecular biologist Sidney Brenner recently invented a delicious play on Occam’s Razor, introducing the new term _Occam’s Broom_, to describe the process in which inconvenient facts are whisked under the rug by intellectually dishonest champions of one theory or another. This is our first boom crutch, an _anti-thinking_ tool, and you should keep your eyes peeled for it. The practice is particularly insidious when used by propagandists who direct their efforts at the lay public, because like Sherlock Holmes’ famous clue about the dog that _didn’t_ bark in the night, **the _absence_ of a fact that has been swept off the scene by Occam’s Broom is unnoticeable except by experts.** --- Date: 20240707 Links to: Tags: References: * [Daniel Dennett: Tools for Critical Thinking](https://fs.blog/daniel-dennett-critical-thinking/)