Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World

[3.75] Don’t let the eye-grabbing title B.S. you. If you’re expecting a lighthearted, entertaining and humorous roadmap to guide you through the cesspools of fake news, this isn’t your book. But if you’re not easily intimidated by math-driven and science-focused examples of misinformation, “Calling Bullshit” will offer many intriguing insights. I’ve red-flagged nearly 50 informational nuggets for future reference, including a dozen that will be integrated into my college-level media literacy class that pinpoints strategies for ferreting out fake news.

True, many of the book’s premises have been explored before. For example, a 4-minute video I’ve been using in my classes for years hits on some of the exact strategies for guarding against misinformation and disinformation. Still, Bergstrom and West serve up some excellent examples that vividly illustrate how data can be manipulated to fool unsuspecting audiences. The authors refer to a headline that screamed “Airport Security Trays Carry More Germs Than Toilets.” This fact was true, but the study only looked at respiratory viruses, the kind often transmitted through droplets on people’s hands when they cough or sneeze. Most of us don’t sneeze onto toilet seats or caress the seats with our hands.

The book offers timely perspectives on artificial intelligence as it highlights the problem of algorithm bias. “When we train machines to make decisions based on data that arise in a biased society, the machines learn and perpetuate those same biases,” write the authors.

“Calling Bullshit” also explores the dangers of confirmation bias (our tendency to notice, believe, and share information that is consistent with our preexisting beliefs) and illusory truth effect (The more often we see something, the more likely we are to believe it). Some reviewers who have described the book as “dense” aren’t spreading fake news. Had the authors spent a bit less time on statistics-focused examples and broadened their focus to include misinformation that had nothing to do with math or science, “Calling Bullshit” would have been more accessible to the general reader. Then again, the subtitle foreshadows the fact that the authors are focusing on our “data-driven world.”

Pretty obvious stuff. I would've put it down but it's very well written and not overly long.

Bullshit uses linear regression…?

They say that it's absurd to claim that women will be running faster than men at some point in the future, but it's worth pointing out that in a pragmatic, real way women are already running faster than men, in the sense that for a very large percentage of men, there are women out there running faster than them. So to call that claim "bullshit" might be fun, but it's already quite inaccurate on the face of it.

In order to make the debunking mean anything, you have to be very careful about exactly what you are debunking. In this case, it sounds like it's something measurable happening among the very top runners in the world, but it's hard to say. Maybe there is some trend among the general population, but again, it's hard to say from the article, and it would take some careful writing to even say what that would mean. We would have to know exactly what the original claim involved, and what parts of it the debunkers were debunking. But by then the joy of the "bullshit calling" might be lost.

Unfortunately, the love of debunking, as we used to call "bullshit calling", leads to a lot of facile and inaccurate claims: enthusiastic debunking is often a form of bullshit. No stuff like that in the book.

The only way to avoid falling for the bullshit of a particular filter bubble is to conscientiously practice "bullshit diversity" (i.e., read a wide variety of outlets you know have identifiable and different ideologies).

I won't get into the specifics, but if you choose to only read conservative sites or only read liberal sites, you're being bullshitted. ...Some might argue the difference is one of degree/volume of bullshit (i.e., "Fox News is far worse than CNN."), but that perspective is actually just one of the more common and troubling symptoms of full-blown bullshititis.

Put another way, Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post (and affiliated publications). Carlos Slim owns more of the New York Times than the Salzbergers. ATT owns CNN. Laurene Jobs owns The Atlantic. The Murdochs own Fox/NY Post/Etc. The Mercers own Breitbart. Haim Saban owns Univision. Comcast owns NBC/MSNBC. Pierre Omidyar owns The Intercept. And The Guardian--while admirably owned by the Scott Trust--lets The Rockefeller Foundation /Ford Foundation/Gates Foundation/Etc. ghostwrite articles. Which one of these billionaires/multinational corporations do you trust?

Answer: "None. Become scientifically literate."

“Calling Bullshit” is a perfect example of re-creating the wheel. Decades ago two professors wrote a book called “Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of Reason in Everyday Life”. The book became a classic and has been used in colleges for many decades. If every college student read and learned the skills taught in this book there would be no need for this hyped bullshit book. Brene Brown in her book “Braving the Wilderness” has a chapter on Speaking Truth to Bullshit - and refers to another book written by Harry G. Frankfurt called “On Bullshit” (2005). Just saying this is not a new phenomenon.