West, Jevin

Notes

• ✅ Introduction to bullshit
  • Brandolini’s Bullshit Asymmetry Principle
  • Harry Frankfurt: On Bullshit
  • Cohen: Deeper into Bullshit
  • Eubanks & Schaeffer: The Problem of Academic Writing
  • Austin: Performative Utterance
• Spotting bullshit
  • Claims and the Interests of Those Who Make Them
  • Heathers: The GRIM Test
  • Newcomb & Benford: The Law of Anomalous Numbers
• The natural ecology of bullshit
  • TED Talks and the Marketplace for Upscale Bullshit
  • Pennycook: On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit.
  • Friggeri: Rumor Cascades
• Causality
  • Spurious Correlations
  • Matthews: Storks deliver babies (p=0.008)
  • Milton Friedman’s Thermostat Analogy
  • Case Study: Traffic Improvements
  • Pearson: Spurious Correlation in the Measurement of Organs
• Statistical traps
• Visualization
• Big data
• Publication bias
• Predatory publishing and scientific misconduct
• The ethics of calling bullshit.
• Fake news
• Refuting bullshit

INFO 270: Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World. Carl T. Bergstrom; Jevin West. www.callingbullshit.org .

99.9% Caffeine-Free

An example of how something can be true and still bullshit after a fashion.

Nestle’s Hot Cocoa mix: With rich chocolate flavor and only 20 calories per single-serve packet, this cocoa makes a 99.9% caffeine-free, 8 fl oz serving. A 20oz Starbucks drip coffee has ~21mg of caffeine per ounce, and thus 0.075% caffeine by weight – strong coffee is also 99.9% caffeine-free!

Time to End the Food Stamp Program?

An example of how Fermi estimation can help spot bullshit in the world.