I can tell a story about this:
Most of the days I go to Cologne by streetcar/underground. Every now and then I see the same woman there, carrying a bag full of different papers. She talks to everyone, no matter if they're eager to listen or not. All of those papers are not exactly the kind of well-balanced news. She starts a discussion about pollution, global warming or whatever it is that's the temporarily common topic. She has read all those papers, but unfortunately not with an critical eye.
I'm careful with believing what someone has written.
After all, you can find that when the number of storks decreased in western Europe, the number of new born childs decreased as well. Does that mean that we're all wrong and it's true after all that the storks bring the babies?
( hehe, I so love that statistic!)
Another sad example is the 3rd Reich. In our history classes we spent pretty much time with reading propaganda of the NSDAP, particularly the early NSDAP in the 1920's. If you read those texts and if you aren't careful you start nodding, just because the argumentation is logical. But that doesn't mean it is right. I've never been quite so scared in my life when I found myself thinking that those people were right.
You always need to look on both sides of the medal, I think I've learned that in school. But that is something you need to be taught.
This is why I'm not keen intelligent design, or rather what I've heard about it, namely that in some areas of the US pupils are told that it is *right*. Apart from the fact that I believe in evolution, I think it is a mistake to tell children something is right when we don't *know* if it is. But that's the tricky thing about knowledge. There is only very little we *know* for sure.
