
'Calling bullshit': the college class on how not to be duped by the news - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/16/calling-bullshit-college-class-news-information
======
gambler
_> "Calling Bullshit is not dedicated to teaching students that Fox News
promotes “fake news” or that National Enquirer headlines are fallacious."_

Oh, the irony. An article about college class that teaches people to spot bad
information online is itself full of standard techniques journalists use to
manipulate people.

I see this one a lot lately. Someone drops a phrase that _assumes_ something
the author wants readers to remember and believe. The phrase is usually oddly
specific, while the author pretends to convey a general idea or talks about
something entirely unrelated.

~~~
leftyted
I think you're wrong.

That quote assumes that when people think about "calling bullshit" in relation
to the news that they would immediately think of Fox News or The National
Enquirer. Is that wrong? Won't most Guardian readers immediately think of Fox
News when they read this headline?

When I clicked on this article, I started from a perspective of "Oh look, it's
The Guardian, a lefty publication, talking about how Fox News is bad. How
shocking". I was wrong.

So yeah, I don't think the bit you quoted is an attempt to manipulate readers.
By referencing Fox News, it's just trying to account for what it assumes its
readers already think. And I think it's basically correct in those
assumptions.

~~~
Bartweiss
To the article's credit, that section makes a real effort to differentiate
"bullshit" from "fake news" and "fallacious".

I know an awful lot of people who are too educated and internet-savvy to
accept most nakedly-false claims, but happily bite on stats that lack per-
capita corrections, or compare rates like change and accuracy without
accounting for base values, or even make subtle but concrete errors like
confusing 'ppm' with 'ppb'. They may not accept anything farcically false, but
"less wrong" is not always "more right", and it's still easy to end up believe
an entire-untrue claim off respectable looking sources. I think the focus on
Snopes-style truth ratings has sometimes hindered our ability to literally
call 'bullshit', asserting that a piece undermines knowledge regardless of its
technical correctness.

I'm not sure if this article succeeds at that - I think conflating Fox with
The National Enquirer and other sources that regularly invent things outright
is a mistake that obscures the discussion. (Fox has run content sourced from
RealTrueNews, but the distinction still matters; fake news sites and the media
titans legitimizing their stories are different parts of the ecosystem.) But
it's a worthwhile attempt regardless.

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olivermarks
I suggest that 'calling bullshit' on just about everything pushed by corporate
news is a good idea, including the Guardian. 'Question everything' is a good
approach to assessing information from all sources. Just because an entity
presents itself as a 'news source' doesn't mean that information is accurate
or unbiased. 'Who benefits' and finding out the facts are key to navigating
our information choked world in my opinion...particularly the facts that
aren't 'reported'...

~~~
matt4077
Great. That way you have absolutely no basis to make any decision on.

It’s utterly impossible to verify even a tiny bit of the information you rely
on every day from first principle. If you don’t find some way to establish
trust, you’re almost literally lost in the wilderness (if you include Google
Maps and all map makers in your “trust no one” shtick).

~~~
coldtea
> _Great. That way you have absolutely no basis to make any decision on._

No basis is better than a bad basis. At least you're not duped into thinking
you have a basis.

> _It’s utterly impossible to verify even a tiny bit of the information you
> rely on every day from first principle._

Doesn't have to be "first principles" (no need to reinvent math for example).

Tons of informations we rely on can be verified quite easily with a little
personal effort, and some good foundational reading on undisputed stuff (like
mathematics, physics, biology, and so on).

For example, you don't need to become a doctor to not be duped by BS fad diets
pushed by the media -- you just need to know enough nutrition basics, easily
doable (and useful in itself).

And if something (e.g. fracking) is important for you, you can study the
literature (starting with books, including university handbooks -- not
internet posts, not articles, and not mere scientific papers of random
research on the matter), talk to some experts directly (it's not impossible,
I've talked with experts in lots of different matters), talk to people in
communities nearby, affected, etc, and draw your own conclusions.

~~~
ithkuil
Then summarize what you learned and write about it so other people can learn
it too ... oh shit now you're a journalist

~~~
coldtea
No, you could be a popular science author.

The problem is that few journalists are that, and the majority of media are
not just full of uninformed journalists, but also pushers of various interests
(political party affiliations, government lobbying, private interests,
industry lobbies, the newspaper's owner, advertisers, etc).

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thedoctor79
> Sir — A. J. Tatem and colleagues calculate that women may out-sprint men by
> the middle of the twenty-second century (Nature 431,525; 2004). They omit to
> mention, however, that (according to their analysis) a far more interesting
> race should occur in about 2636, when times of less than zero seconds will
> be recorded.

This analysis fails to account for the prediction that in early 27th century
FTL speeds will be achievable and a woman would invent a relativistic shoe
that would allow here to wind the 100 meters dash.

------
troyvit
Something tells me that college is not where this class belongs.

~~~
java-man
you are right, we need to teach our kids about bullshit much earlier.

~~~
ravenstine
We all keep saying that. So how do we get the ball rolling?

~~~
scottie_m
Convince parents that teaching kids to think critically is more important than
indoctrinating said child into whichever religion or political sphere the
parent is already a part of. In my experience that’s a broadly impossible
task. Parents want their kids to think critically only about the things the
parent already rejects.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Kids that think critically are less susceptible to lazy parenting.

Nobody wants to explain to their 5yo why they can't afford a Barbie Jeep but
can afford booze or going out to eat. Nobody wants a teenager that is well
versed in assessing the goals and motivation of all the parties in any given
situation because they'll recognize all the partial truths they get fed in an
attempt to make them to take risks in a manner more like an adult. A teenager
that understands statistics well would be impossible to scare into not doing
"bad things". Likewise thinking critically is not a high priority thing for
parents to teach.

When you're dealing with someone who can't think on the same level as you
lying is just so damn easy. They are playing checkers. You are playing seven
dimensional chess. Teaching kids to think critically requires a constant
effort and directly negatively impacts the parents in the short term. It's
like quitting smoking for 18yr, no wonder most people don't do it.

~~~
scottie_m
Honestly I never considered that angle, but I have to agree. I’ve always
focused on grander aspects of it, but of course the small everyday lies and
manipulations would be more central.

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random_upvoter
Speaking of bullshit, have the Guardian retracted their story about Paul
Manafort meeting with Julian Assange in London?

~~~
starik36
That's exactly right. And even if they do, it'll be some small article on page
20 equivalent of the web.

For Guardian (or others) to really regain the trust, they should have a WE
WERE WRONG article on their front page for as long as their fake story was
there. And it should outline where they went wrong and what steps will be
taken to make sure it doesn't happen again.

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lsniddy
Here's the easiest way to understand how inaccurate most reporting is:

Read any mainstream coverage over a topic you are deeply knowledgeable in.

~~~
Balgair
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-
Mann_amnesia_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect)

~~~
lsniddy
Hah great, it appears theres a second step that needs to be explicit:

Apply to all topics

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monksy
So, in other words, a class in critical thinking and media literacy.

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miesman
Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4Ha9HQvMo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4Ha9HQvMo)

~~~
degenerate
Haha, not much has changed, except now instead of emails/letters they show
tweets. Cable news is a waste of time.

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drinane
For me it was English Comp freshman year from this wild man:
[https://www.winona.edu/english/brault.asp](https://www.winona.edu/english/brault.asp)

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b_tterc_p
Their example about the algorithm that predicts if you’re a criminal by
looking at your face seems... poorly thought out. Note, it’s not facial
recognition. It’s prediction. They make the claim that it’s all about jury
perception. Maybe it is, but far more important is that it’s likely just using
an estimate of race and wealth. I’m annoyed that they didn’t talk about the
bigger red flag: “90% accuracy”.

Maybe they should just teach stats...

Edit: pre-empting a nitpick: when I say “wealth” I mean largely as proxied by
hairstyle

~~~
joombaga
Don't facial recognition systems generally use predictive models?

~~~
b_tterc_p
As the article was worded, it was not a system to predict whose face it was,
but rather to predict, baseline, if a person were a criminal (as a descriptor,
not a specific one)

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growlist
Should be especially useful when reading the Grauniad then!

