Nov 3 - Be skeptical, Very skeptical...

 I recently listened to Bergstrom and West's new book Calling Bullshit.  The authors are UW professors, one in biology and one in information science.  They highlight popular topics, scientific papers, political statements, and more, and show how statements made are misleading, data used to support topics is not valid for any of several reasons, hypotheses are incomplete or developed after the study was underway, and so much more.  It is a full course given at UW, condensed to some extent to be presented in just over of 10 hours if all you do is listen.

I thought we might discuss how we each protect ourselves from the ubiquitous barrage of dis- and mis-information that surrounds us every day.  Perhaps you can bring your favorite BS statement that we can debunk, or at least dissect.

The publisher's blurb taken from Audible.com:

Bullshit isn’t what it used to be. Now, two science professors give us the tools to dismantle misinformation and think clearly in a world of fake news and bad data.

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. Start-up 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.

We have always needed people who call bullshit when necessary, whether within a circle of friends, a community of scholars, or the citizenry of a nation. Now that bullshit has evolved, we need to relearn the art of skepticism.