"Bullshit and the Art of Crap Detection" (1969 Speech)

Take a look at this speech by Neil Postman from 1969. It is called "Bullshit and the Art of Crap Detection".

I had heard of this before, and I found it today through the Twitter post below, where again note that it was uttered in 1969.

Oh Neil, if you'd only lived to see Facebook and Twitter. pic.twitter.com/USZozDmZTE

— Calling Bullshit (@callin_bull) September 2, 2017

A Hierarchy of Types of Disagreement

I really like this pyramidal visualization of types of disagreement!

Grahams Hierarchy of Disagreement is like a Bloom's Taxonomy of Calling Bullshit.https://t.co/9ZpZ8bsxBD pic.twitter.com/xZIe75Bnub

— Calling Bullshit (@callin_bull) March 4, 2017

New Course Proposal (University of Washington): "Calling Bullshit"

Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin West from University of Washington have developed an important and interesting course called Calling Bullshit. It isn't yet part of a course catalog, but they have assembled a great selection of reading, and hopefully it will be an "official" offering soon.

As they write: "We're sick of it. It's time to do something, and as educators, one constructive thing we know how to do is to teach people. So, the aim of this course is to help students navigate the bullshit-rich modern environment by identifying bullshit, seeing through it, and combatting it with effective analysis and argument."

(Tip of the cap to the Bansal lab.)

Update: I have updated this blog entry (adding and slightly changing some text above) to make it clear that the course isn't literally being offered yet, but its material has been assembled, so go take a look at it!

Update (1/14/17): I wrote a blurb about this course for the Improbable Research blog.

PLOS ONE and Donald Trump

Apparently, this is a match made in Heaven.

Wow. Just wow.

(Tip of the cap to Ernie Barreto.)

Update (5/7/16): Ashley Landrum has re-analyzed the data from the paper and come to very different conclusions (and torn the paper apart). (Tip of the cap to Sharon Lubkin.)