USA - University of Washington: How's Your BS Detector?

[ahimsa]

Interesting article about

"a wildly popular UW [University of Washington] course taught by Bergstrom and West, 'Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World,' and a book with a similar name."

https://artsci.washington.edu/news/2023-09/hows-your-bs-detector

(line breaks added)

A central goal is to challenge the idea that those who collect and analyze data know more than the rest of us and their findings shouldn’t be questioned.

“The data in a research study have been constructed in a deliberate way,” Bergstrom says.

“The person with the data gets to frame the story and the person without the data does not. When someone shows you data, they’re not beyond reproach. You can question their interpretation of the data.”

Of course, people lacking expertise in statistical analysis — in other words, most of us — may feel unqualified to question data.

But the professors believe that the intimidating data-crunching phase of a study is rarely where the most troubling misinformation happens. More likely causes: how the research question is framed, how subjects are chosen, how data are collected, and how results are presented.

FYI, Bergstrom has a Mastodon account here: https://fediscience.org/@ct_bergstrom

 

[Sean]

Probably apocryphal, but a winner of a science Nobel prize was asked how they got the right answer, and they replied:

You don't get a Nobel prize for getting the right answer, you get it for asking the right question.

 

[JemPD]

Has someone alerted them to PACE? it'd be a great example for them to use i'd have thought.

@dave30th you very likely well aware of this but tagging you JIC