MohamedTaqi
Thinker
I don't know of any particular papers ... but here an example of my personal experience.
When I took an introductory course in evolutionary biology about 12 years ago ( I was 20 at the time), I was so exicted about the subject, in fact : I was dreaming evolution day and night. The feeling was as if a light bulb turned on in my head ... evolution is such a simple and beautiful idea. Because of my excitement , I was so obsessed with writing facebook articles that translate some ideas into Arabic and French ... enter extremism and dogmatism .
I remember one of the ideas that haunted me for long, was this one : Since evolution relies on natural selection, and disused traits are probably lost, then : if all people can reproduce in a civilized society that grants this right to all its citizens, then it follows that many traits that make us humans are no longer selected for (like brain and intelligence, vision...etc), because in a civilized society, all people get to marry and procreate therefore, less selection ... And this could cause us to lose what makes us human just as cave fish lost their eyes. And when one loves an idea, it just becomes very difficult to correct it.
But all that fuss faded out when I studied more throughout the years, I learned about Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and I knew why that will not probably happen (because of many reasons including the fact that humans have a large population), I deleted some crappy articles I wrote, I deleted my quora and facebook accounts, and I trashed that pseudoscientific idea, and I admitted that I was wrong.
The point is that when one first learns about a subject, excitment makes them blindfolded, they feel like they are a new Einstein or Newton... It is good to feel excited about learning new things, but that excitment can backfire and turn into a weakness that makes one jump to pseudoscientific conclusions. Especially if you think that you have a new genius idea (Youtube is full of such channels).
Just learn the facts, without emotions, without excitments ... and once you learn new facts : use critical thinking, ask yourself this question : what would I do to falsify this idea? and if it is false, what are the alternatives? and if you come up with an alternative, ask yourself : Either scientists thought about it or I am the first one to think about it. I would be so dumb to think that I am smarter than them, therefore it must be that my idea is probably false.
On the other hand : learning about the big bang, the standard model, the 4 forces and their unification theories, and where modern physics stand vis-a-vis dark energy and dark matter, and what particles are discovered and which are still theorical, and how evolution works and what are some of its trends (like : punctuated equilibrium...etc), and then learn about the history of life on earth, and the solar system...etc.
The more you learn, the more you detect any extraordinary claim , for example : just hearing the word "quantum healing", which uses a word from Quantum Physics, and a word in "new age medecine" ... makes it obvious that this is probably crap. The words bear no meaning together, they are ambiguous and fuzzy, and cannot mean anything as far as modern science is concerned.
On the other hand, if something looks like a "major leap" or "a paradigm shift" , you have be skeptical, as there are only few paradigm shifts throughout the history of science, and it is very unlikely that a new shift will be any time soon.
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