“The world is awash in bullshit.” (C. Bergstorm and J. West)
We’ve all been had. Who would not be? Bullshit does not sound like bullshit. It soundsprofessional, profound, and learned. It does not seem to make sense, but it is very difficult to identify what is amiss.
Businesses are good at this. Phrases like “synergize world-class models”, “benchmark innovative relationships”, “unleash killer technologies” on a presentation or in a meeting will most probably impress the audience. But these were generated from bullshitgenerator.com, “a site dedicated to generating bullshit for your next meeting, project proposal, or conversation with your boss…”
Recent buzzwords in the academe are similar. “Flipped classroom”, “high impact internationalization”, “future-proof curriculum”, “blended learning” are catchy, cute, and novel. But what do they really mean? Or do they mean anything at all?
According to University of Washington college professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, “bullshit involves language, statistical figures, data graphics, and other forms of presentation intended to persuade by impressing and overwhelming a reader or listener, with a blatant disregard for truth and logical coherence.”
In 2015, the article “On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit” identified two mechanisms that might explain why people are receptive to bullshit. One, some may have “a strong bias towards accepting things as true or meaningful at the outset.”Picture members of political and religious movements, civic associations, or educational institutions.Two, there is the potential inability to detect bullshit. All too often, what listeners fail to understand, they pretend to, and they accept as profound.
In 1995, scientist Carl Sagan wrote “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection”. The article is available online. According to Sagan, scientists are trained to detect baloney. They are equipped with tools for skeptical thinking. These tools include independent confirmation of facts, unreliability of authority, quantifying information, and simplifying explanations, among others. The article also highlighted the most common and dangerous fallacies in logic and rhetoric.
Between January 2015 and June 2016, Stanford History Education Group “prototyped, field-tested, and validated a bank of assessments that tapped students’ ability to judge the credibility of information that flood young people’s smartphones, tablets, and computers.” The study summed up the students’ ability in one word: bleak. According to the report, although the students, as “digital natives”, are able to flip and move between multiple media, they are easily fooled by information emanating from social media.
The study suggests that “regular practice with reading, analyzing, and evaluating informationmay be the best defense against sinking into misinformation bogs”.
In 2017, professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West initiated a course “Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World”. At the end of the course, students are expected to “remain vigilant for bullshit contaminating your information diet, recognize bullshit whenever and wherever you encounter it, figure out precisely why a particular bit of bullshit is bullshit, provide a statistician or fellow scientist with a technical explanation of why a claim is bullshit,” among others.
The course includes topics such asintroduction to bullshit, spotting bullshit, the natural ecology of bullshit, statistical traps, big data, publication bias, scientific misconduct, fake news, etc. The entire course syllabus and materials can be accessed at callingbullshit.org. The short lectures can also be accessed on youtube.com.
Aside from identifying bullshit, students are also expected to call bullshit. Calling bullshit is “a performative utterance, a speech act in which one publicly repudiates something objectionable…”This can extend to include “lies, treachery, trickery, or injustice.”
The university webpage reported the course has “sparked educators… to reach out as they developed their own versions of the course.” And materials on the course site have been accessed and used in other colleges as well.
According to Bergstrom and West, “It’s time to do something, and as educators, one constructive thing we know how… is to help students navigate the bullshit-rich modern environment by identifying bullshit, seeing through it, and combating it with effective analysis and argument.”
“The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.” (Brandolini’s Law)
(Warning: This article may contain “bullshit.”)
Real Carpio So lectures on strategy and human resource management at the Management and Organization Department of the Ramon V. del Rosario College of Business of De La Salle University. He is also an entrepreneur and a management consultant. He welcomes comments at realwalksonwater@gmail.com. Archives can be accessed at realwalksonwater.wordpress.com. The views expressed above are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official position of DLSU, its faculty, and its administrators.
