scientific-critical-thinking · davila7 — Claude Code skill: what it does

What scientific-critical-thinking does

The skill works through a paper in layers. It starts with study design: does it fit the research question, and can it support the causal claims being made. Then it moves to validity — internal, external, construct and statistical — covering randomization, confounder control and blinding.

A separate pass targets bias. It looks for confirmation bias, HARKing, publication bias, selection and survivorship effects, p-hacking and outcome switching. Evidence quality gets scored against GRADE and Cochrane risk of bias. Bundled references include references/scientific_method.md, references/experimental_design.md and references/common_biases.md, plus scripts/generate_schematic.py for diagrams.

The skill can call Read, Write, Edit and Bash, so schematic generation runs inside the session. That part needs Python, since the script ships with the skill. If you only want a text critique of a paper, you can skip the diagram step entirely.