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University Offers Course To Help Sniff Out and Refute 'Bullshit' (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fighting-back dept.

An anonymous reader shares an Engadget report: There's now a course at the University of Washington, "Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data" that helps you find bad information and show others why it's bad. The instructors, Professors Jevin D. West and Carl T. Bergstrom, jokingly write that "we will be astonished if these skills do not turn out to be among the most useful ... that you acquire during the course of your college education." They add that the intention is not to be political, as "both sides of the aisle have proven themselves facile at creating and spreading bullshit." The intention, then, is to arm students (and the public if they want) with the tools to combat a scourge of misinformation that's aided and abetted by social media.

20 of 402 comments (clear)

  1. Umm by geek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They already had this. It's called citing your sources and peer review. We also used to have open discussions but those got shut down in favor of safe spaces. Now you can't say shit without some snowflake getting their feelings hurt because, you know, feelings are more important than the truth and stuff.

    1. Re:Umm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's also all those damned trump fanatics maintaining their The_Donald safe space and shutting down anyone who even has the slightest idea that they might be wrong, but like the submission said, let's not get political.

    2. Re:Umm by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1, Insightful

      They already had this. It's called citing your sources and peer review.

      Unless you're the president, in which case you can just make up any old bullshit that sounds good, even about nonexistent terrorist attacks, the "historical" margin of your electoral victory or the size of your inauguration attendance. Just because it makes you and your supporters feel good, which is the most important thing.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:Umm by wickerprints · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Back when I was in middle and high school, we were taught basic aspects of conducting research, such as differentiating between primary and secondary source materials. We were also taught how to cite sources appropriately, and when our papers were graded, the biggest penalties (short of plagiarism) were for things like failure to cite, or to present opinion as fact.

      Of course, being just lowly teenagers not yet at a university, things like peer review didn't really apply. At the end of the day, our projects were still shitty essays on familiar topics that were not even remotely close to being candidates for publication anywhere except the confines of the classroom. But my point is that these things are skills that can be taught, and are for the most part, generally taught to varying degrees of success, but in this day and age, I am not entirely sure it is enough, because I believe that students frequently fail to make the connection between the critical thinking processes behind academic research, and the critical thinking that should be applied when evaluating issues we encounter in real life.

      And this, I would argue, is how educators should help their students to bridge this gap. Mere access to information is inadequate, because citing your sources and having peer review is not sufficient when one is not able to discern what is reliable and unreliable information. More information is not necessarily more ACCURATE information.

      As for your emotional screed about safe spaces and "snowflakes," I find it quite telling that you chose to go that route, as it suggests an ideological agenda on your part. It certainly does not reflect a dispassionate or objective means to address the difficulty that the general public would appear to have in distinguishing what is credible information from propaganda.

    4. Re:Umm by racermd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Back when I was in school (when the Earth was still cooling) this was called, "Critical Thinking." It wasn't given its own dedicated program as it was intertwined with everything else being taught. It's not just citing sources and peer review, though. It requires one to analyze why someone is saying what they're saying. Put another way, it's critical to question the motivations of the communicator as much as it is to question the veracity of the message, itself. The best bullshitters are able to use cherry-picked, real, verifiable facts to back up their claims. Their messages only fall apart if one questions their motivation and looks for additional data to fill in a larger picture.

      It seems as though this basic skill stopped being taught in primary and secondary schools and replaced with ignorant structures that teach only to standardized tests.

      Basic comprehension and competency isn't really enough. A good education teaches you facts and provides knowledge. A GREAT education teaches you how to teach yourself. Having an open mind and being willing to admit being wrong in the face of new evidence is what separates the latter from the former.

      --
      My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
    5. Re:Umm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Protip: if your "truth" winds up offending lots of people, there's a good chance it's actually just your own shitty opinion. And, y'know, it's fine to have shitty opinions, it's even often fine to spout your shitty opinion out loud, it's just not a good idea to delude yourself into thinking that shitty opinion is "truth".

      Furthermore, if you then feel the need to call people who object to your shitty opinion "snowflakes", there's a good chance that you're actually as sensitive, if not more so, than the people who are telling you where to stick your shitty opinion.

    6. Re:Umm by gtall · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Citing sources is no panacea, the BS artists will only cite each other in circular jerk of stupid citing.

      Whether we like it or not, it comes to chains of trust. Sources such as proper news organizations need to be properly compensated for the money it takes to properly vet stories. And right and left wing-nuts shouldn't have any gravity associated by the rest of us with opinions about "fake" news from those sources they don't like.

      The push for private grade school and high school education over public education will only make the problem worse. Many of those private schools are only interested in providing thought silos so that kids cannot ever get honest opposing views. Hiding behind "religious freedom" becomes merely a term for hiding behind ignorance.

    7. Re:Umm by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1, Insightful

      They already had this. It's called citing your sources and peer review. We also used to have open discussions but those got shut down in favor of safe spaces. Now you can't say shit without some snowflake getting their feelings hurt because, you know, feelings are more important than the truth and stuff.

      Yes, Trump (the biggest snowflake of all) and his followers are easily upset by things like the Truth and "things they don't like / understand".

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    8. Re:Umm by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Sniffing out Bull was pretty much the overarching goal of all degrees when I went to college.

      When was that? When I went to college 35 years ago, it was about convincing all the students that capitalism is evil, Karl Marx was right about everything, we needed to advocate for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the way to get an "A" in the class was to parrot the propaganda back in all your essays.

    9. Re:Umm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your daily reminder that the participation trophy is an invention of the boomers who awarded them, not the millennials that received them.

    10. Re: Umm by losfromla · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Obama threw away his chance to railroad the Repug's when he had the super-majority in both houses of Congress during the first half of his first term in office. If he had executed the mandate he was elected under, he might have held on to this super-majority for the entirety of both of his terms. He was elected "Like a Boss" but behaved like a mouse. tRumpf OTOH was barely elected and is behaving like he owned the damned country. I strongly wish Obama had a much stronger asshole streak that both dubya and the orange troll did.

      --
      Only I can judge you.
    11. Re:Umm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Let's run the bullshit detector over your comment.

      Conservatives love Milo

      Bzzzt. They tolerate him because he shows what a big tub of bullshit liberals are. When they call a gay Jew with a black boyfriend a "Nazi sympathizing, racist homophobic" it shows what side of reality they operate on -- the opposite side the rest of the planet does. They *tolerate* him for this reason. TOLERATE. TOLERANCE is a word that liberals love to spew out with their whips and chains, but they don't even know the definition. Anything they don't agree with must be DESPISED AND DESTROYED -- such as with the case of Milo.

      Conservative media industrial complex

      Yeah, two whole people and their poorly-selling books. What's a fucking Media Industrial Complex again?

      CIA official quit over Trump's "America First" policy

      That's the funniest thing I've read in 20 years. CIA, of all fucking organizations, has done more evil shit to other countries on this planet, under the protective shield of "America First" than anyone. I don't really want to start with this one, because the ensuing post would probably end up being the end of Slashdot. CIA complaining about Trump's "America First" policy -- what a fucking crock of shit.

      Trump might start a war

      With whom? The only organization he's threatened with US military might were the coyotes and drug cartels -- offering to help Mexico clean them up. You don't care about those guys though. Worrying about human trafficking and drug trafficking that has destroyed Mexico's culture and economy, resulting in wholesale rape and murder at a nearly incomprehensible scale, is something that can be easily dismissed as "racist" because Trumpf is orange, LOL!

    12. Re: Umm by losfromla · · Score: 2, Insightful

      He might have said a lot of things but he didn't follow through. Did not follow through with his weak-ass threats. From the beginning his stupid offerings were already watered down "so they could pass" and get some repugnicant approval. As if that mattered. He was weak from the start due to his desire to "bring the country together". That's not what we voted for, we voted for a guy that claimed to be skinny but scrappy. He proved to be not at all scrappy, and disappointed a great many people.

      Obamacare became a giveaway to the repugnant Health Insurance, Corporate Medical, and Big Pharma industries. He should have kicked the shit out of the repugnicants and pushed through single-payer healthcare. Instead he compromised and as usual, the industrial complex got what it wanted and the american citizen got the shaft. I used lc for american citizen because clearly us plebes aren't worth shit to either of the parties. The parties both are beholden to large corporate interests, no tangible differences between them. This is is why Bernie would have been such an interesting Prez. tRumpf is the evil (stupid, misogynistic, racist, insensitive, thoughtless) version of Bernie.

      --
      Only I can judge you.
  2. I don't need a course on this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    I just use the old adage about how you can tell if a politician is lying...his lips are moving. I just assume most stories have elements of fabrication in them, especially if it's a social cause. Most writers are writing with an agenda so you need to consider their angle. It's not to inform you.

  3. throwing gas on the fire by micahraleigh · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You think more curriculum and snobbery will solve this problem? Do tell!

    1. Re:throwing gas on the fire by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You think more curriculum and snobbery will solve this problem? Do tell!

      Thank you for standing up and showing that ignorance is just as valuable as education.

  4. detecting fallacies = detecting bs by MrL0G1C · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Schools should teach all pupils to be able to spot fallacies, and encourage them to castigate those who use them. A world without fallacies would be a world where trump couldn't be president.

    --
    Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
  5. People have to *want* to know the truth first by MobyDisk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Part of the problem is that people can't detect BS. The other part is that they don't care. Once people have chosen a side, they tend to ignore information that disproves their assumed position. How do we deal with that problem?

  6. Democrat rants = Bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Simple to detect, really

  7. Re:suggestions for the course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    5. Lowering taxes on the wealthy will create jobs.