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University offers course on calling scientific bullshit

Wolfiness

Activity Level 0
Messages
482
Location
UK
Http://callingbullshit.org/index.html
The world is awash in bullshit. Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Higher education rewards bullshit over analytic thought. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. Advertisers wink conspiratorially and invite us to join them in seeing through all the bullshit — and take advantage of our lowered guard to bombard us with bullshit of the second order. The majority of administrative activity, whether in private business or the public sphere, seems to be little more than a sophisticated exercise in the combinatorial reassembly of bullshit.

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 combating it with effective analysis and argument.
 

Wolfiness

Activity Level 0
Messages
482
Location
UK
Innit, though they do say
Can you guys call bullshit on [this thing that I don't like]?
The purpose of this website is to teach people how to spot bullshit and refute it. We don't intend to use it as a platform for calling bullshit on things that we don't like, and we certainly don't intend to use it as a platform for calling bullshit on things you don't like.

Our case studies are not the most egregious examples of bullshit, nor the ones we most wish to debunk. Rather, they are chosen to serve a pedagogical purpose, drawing our particular pitfalls and highlighting particular strategies for responding. So read up, think carefully, and call bullshit yourself.
 
Stat News article about this, originally from Feb this year as well - https://www.statnews.com/2017/02/17/science-fights-alternative-facts/

Tired of alternative facts, fake news, and breathless hyperbole, two professors at the University of Washington are trying to strike a blow for science.

Their weapon? A new course: “Calling Bullshit In the Age of Big Data.”

The class website and colorful syllabus went online last month and almost instantly went viral.

“We woke up the next morning to chaos. We had 20,000 visitors, our mailboxes were full, we were getting book offers,” said Carl Bergstrom, a biologist who helped create the course.

Bergstrom’s teaching partner, Jevin West, an assistant professor in UW’s Information School, put it this way: “We just struck a nerve.”
 

sb4

Senior Member
Messages
1,654
Location
United Kingdom
Interestingly the video game MGS 2 was based on this concept. That with so much information around it was near impossible to tell truth from fiction. Everything could be simulated to create your own truth.

That technology exsits even today. Soon even video evidence could not be used to prove things.
 

Jenny TipsforME

Senior Member
Messages
1,184
Location
Bristol
I think my partner (a lecturer) is going to love these resources. Essentially it is the most important skill to teach students but much trickier than teaching content.