Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis

hypotheses. Whatever was left at the end of the process would be the
most likely explanation. Would this guarantee a correct “answer”
Ben-Israel concludes that although the answer has to be “no,” the
approach does allow for narrowing “the margin of error.” 63
It does
so by moving the analyst away from a “pole of dogmatic tenacity”
toward a “pole of refutation” (summarized in figure 6). 64
Figure 6: A Place for Analysis between Dogmatism and
Criticism
Source: Derived from Ben-Israel, “Methodology of Intelligence,” 679.
It should be noted that operating too closely to a pole of refutation
can also create problems. For example, analysts might be unable to
distinguish between real threats and false positives; they might react
to each one regardless of its validity. In the Cuban case, this problem
would have manifested itself in goading continual U.S. military
reactions to every perceived Soviet and Cuban threat. Here again,
63 Ben-Israel, “Logic of the Estimate Process,” 679
64 Ben-Israel, “Logic of the Estimate Process,” 691.
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