William J. Sutherland, David Spiegelhalter and Mark A. Burgman published a comprehensive list of 20 tips for interpreting scientific claims in Nature that the writers think “…should be part of the education of civil servants, politicians, policy advisers and journalists — and anyone else who may have to interact with science or scientists. Politicians with a healthy scepticism of scientific advocates might simply prefer to arm themselves with this critical set of knowledge.”

You can read the article here, this is the list:

1. Differences and chance cause variation.
2. No measurement is exact.
3. Bias is rife.
4. Bigger is usually better for sample size.
5. Correlation does not imply causation.
6. Regression to the mean can mislead.
7. Extrapolating beyond the data is risky
8. Beware the base-rate fallacy.
9. Controls are important.
10. Randomization avoids bias.
11. Seek replication, not pseudoreplication.
12. Scientists are human.
13. Significance is significant.
14. Separate no effect from non-significance.
15. Effect size matters.
16. Study relevance limits generalizations.
17. Feelings influence risk perception.
18. Dependencies change the risks.
19. Data can be dredged or cherry picked.
20. Extreme measurements may mislead.