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

Author: Carl T. Bergstrom, Jevin D. West

Narrator: Patrick Zeller

Unabridged: 10 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/04/2020

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included

Synopsis

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. Startup 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.

This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF that contains multiple examples of bullshit in the form of charts, graphs, and illustrations from the book.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ryan on August 12, 2020

Brandolini’s law, which states that “the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it,” explains why there is so much bullshit in the world. As Uriel Fanelli put it, “an idiot can create more bullshit than you could ever hope to refute.” So......more

Goodreads review by Tara on August 06, 2020

I had high hopes for this book. It is OK. It makes some strong points about quantification and the visualization of data sets. But in so many ways, it performs the problems it critiques, but in the inverse. Two scientists write this book. Their commentary on science is welcome. But they are attemptin......more

Goodreads review by Wick on December 13, 2022

Falsehoods fly and truth comes limping after it. This is a very important book to read right now.I highly recommend reading it as soon as possible. What Bergstrom and his colleague accomplishes in "Calling Bullshit" is a blueprint of all the various ways in which lies, exaggerations, contextualizati......more

Goodreads review by Atila on December 31, 2020

Um bom livro sobre pensamento crítico e ferramentas para detecção de bullshit. De falas distorcidas e reportagens para chamar a atenção até comunicação científica e política. De números e fatos distorcidos a análises exageradamente complicadas para esconder uma conclusão que não se condiz com a real......more

Goodreads review by Paul on May 15, 2022

Bullshit involves language, statistical figures, data graphics, and other forms of presentation intended to persuade or impress an audience by distracting, overwhelming, or intimidating them with a blatant disregard for truth, logical coherence, or what information is actually being conveyed. The sub......more

Quotes

“A modern classic . . . Bergstrom and West leave the reader feeling a very particular kind of smarter: the empowered kind. . . . A straight-talking survival guide to the mean streets of a dying democracy and a global pandemic.”—Wired

“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 of How Not to be Wrong

“If I could make this critical handbook’s contents required curriculum for every high school student (thus replacing trigonometry), then I would do so. I highly recommend Calling Bullshit for our modern existence in the age of misinformation, and regret only that I didn’t think of the title for my own book.”—Cathy O’Neil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction

“I laughed, I cried—to read Bergstrom and West’s great examples of ‘bullshit.’ This is a gripping read for anybody who cares about how we are fooled (and how not to be), and the connection to numeracy and science. But it’s also just great fun. This is a necessary book for our times.”—Saul Perlmutter, Nobel Laureate and professor of physics, University of California at Berkeley 

“If you want to read what will surely be a classic, buy Calling Bullshit. It addresses the most important issue of our time: the decline in respect for Truth. It is also a literary masterpiece. Every page—indeed, every paragraph—is a new bit of fun.” —George Akerlof, 2001 Nobel Laureate in economics

“Each of us now swims through deception so pervasive that we no longer realize it’s there. Calling Bullshit presents a master class in how to spot it, how to resist it, and how to keep it from succeeding.”—Paul Romer, 2018 Nobel Laureate in economics

“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

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