Calling Bullshit

I remember as a youngster, when someone would say something which on the face of it seemed wrong, I and my buds would call them out by saying, “Prove it!” As we got older, but not demonstrably smarter, we would call out improbable statements by yelling out, “I am calling a Bullshit on that one!”

Today the science world is doing the same on incorrect or false claims about climate change. Scientists are standing up to the daily lies spread via the internet. These dangerous lies often worm their way into political publications, reputable newspapers and our minds.

Universities are employing scientists to study the psychology of lying, why people latch onto lies and spread them, and how to combat the lying pandemic.

Scientists aware of the danger created by the super spreader of lies, social media, are focused on defeating the tornado storm of misinformation which sucks logic and reason out of our US citizenry. It is crucial the current trend is reversed as philosophers Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaugh advise us, “A democratic society depends on the ability of its members to make rational choices. But rational choices must be based on rational beliefs. If we can’t tell the difference between reasonable and unreasonable claims, we become susceptible to the claims of charlatans, scoundrels, and mountebanks.”

One preeminent communication scientist leading the charge to defend truth is a product of Michigan Public Schools, then Harvard and Stanford. He is Carl Bergstrom. Some of his prodigious work on the proliferation of lies was published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science in 2021. As he put it in the science journal, “Misinformation has reached crisis proportions.” If we do not confront it, “It poses a risk to international peace, interferes with democratic decision making, endangers the well-being of the planet, and threatens public health.”

Bergstrom, with Jevin West, have also written a book borrowing on the ancient wisdom of my childhood buds.  It is titled, “Calling Bullshit”.

If you are interested in sharpening your thinking skills, you may find their book just the tool to hone your skepticism saber.

Via Amazon, the book is rated as best in non-fiction and described this way: “Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news abound and it’s increasingly difficult to know what’s true. Our media environment has become hyperpartisan. Science is conducted by press release. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. We are fairly well equipped to spot the sort of old-school bullshit that is based in fancy rhetoric and weasel words, but most of us don’t feel qualified to challenge the avalanche of new-school bullshit presented in the language of math, science, or statistics. In Calling Bullshit, Professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West give us a set of powerful tools to cut through the most intimidating data.

You don’t need a lot of technical expertise to call out problems with data. Are the numbers or results too good or too dramatic to be true? Is the claim comparing like with like? Is it confirming your personal bias? Drawing on a deep well of expertise in statistics and computational biology, Bergstrom and West exuberantly unpack examples of selection bias and muddled data visualization, distinguish between correlation and causation, and examine the susceptibility of science to modern bullshit.”
Here is what Wired Magazine has to say about Calling Bullshit, “A modern classic . . . a straight-talking survival guide to the mean streets of a dying democracy and a global pandemic.”

And if this whets your appetite for ferreting out truth from lies, here is a book inspired by the Trump Presidency, “A Lot of People are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy” by Russel Muirhead and Nancy L Rosenblum professors at Dartmouth and Harvard Colleges respectively.

For a deeper dive into the dark art of subverting science, read Shawn Otto’s, “The War on Science: Who is Waging it, Why it matters, and What we can do about it.”

When mulling over the decision to sharpen our intellectual skills you may want to heed the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, “Wherever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

These days it takes a little more time to be wisely informed. Maybe a lot more.

References: Science Magazine 25 March 2022; Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 42 No. 2

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