We can help ourselves think more critically by keeping the following points in mind.

• Beware: We can all be fooled. Possibly the most common pitfall with regard to critical thinking is the belief that one is already a good critical thinker.
• Be wary of your intuitions: Pay attention to them, but do not trust them.
• Be wary of the Fundamental Attribution Error, the tendency that we all have to attribute people's behaviors to their characters and intentions while overlooking or minimizing the power of the situation, which often plays the greater role in determining people's actions.
• Be wary of personal validation. While personal experience can be a great teacher, personal validation —judging a claim based only on personal experience— is often a poor guide to its validity.
• Beware of reliance on a single source of information.
• Beware of mistaking coincidence for causation. We are born magical thinkers, and magical thinking continues to lurk beneath the surface in wait for reason to falter.
• Be wary of over-interpreting correlations. Just as with coincidence, we can all too readily mistake correlations for cause and effect. Moreover, some of the “correlations” that we observe may not actually be correlations at all. They may be illusory.
• Keep the "Scottish verdict" in mind and suspend judgment. (Juries in criminal trials in Scotland are not forced to
  choose between guilty or innocent; they can also opt for „not proven“.)
  >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><

From the book: James E. Alcock: Belief: What It Means to Believe and Why Our Convictions Are So Compelling