Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World - Carl T. Bergstrom, Jevin D. West

Written by Carl T. Bergstrom, Jevin D. West
Read by Patrick Zeller
Format: MP3
Unabridged

“A passionate exposition of how the language of science can be weaponized to mislead both researchers and the public . . . landing just when it has never been more important to know how to navigate data.”
- Nature

“The information landscape is strewn with quantitative cowflop; read this book if you want to know where not to step.”
- Jordan Ellenberg, author ‘How Not to be Wrong’

“Part playful polemic and part serious scientific treatise on a plague that ‘pollutes our world by misleading people about specific issues and … undermines our ability to trust information in general’ … a statistically challenging master class in the art of bullshit detection.”
- Kirkus Reviews

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.