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posted by martyb on Saturday December 12 2015, @12:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the orly? dept.

I receive the Bright's Bulletin from The Brights Net (http://www.the-brights.net/) (A "bright" (n.) is a person whose worldview is naturalistic (no supernatural and mystical elements)) and the December issue highlights an article from the Journal of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making (SJDM) and the European Association for Decision Making (EADM): On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit

From the Bulletin:

Receptivity for "Bullshit" Scrutinized

The authors of a recent article in the Journal of Judgment and Decisionmaking do not hold back. Having considered "nonsense" and "rubbish" inadequate to the phenomenon of interest, they deem "bullshit" a consequential aspect of the human condition and set about to put at least one type of it under empirical investigation.

Titling their report, "On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit," they define the attribute as "seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous."

After pursuing 4 different studies regarding bullshit detection, the authors conclude, among other things:

"[W]ith the rise of communication technology, people are likely encountering more bullshit in their everyday lives than ever before."... [S]ome people are more receptive to this type of bullshit" and "[D]etecting it is not merely a matter of indiscriminate skepticism but rather a discernment of deceptive vagueness in otherwise impressive sounding claims."

The study is serious, but reading it is likely to bring chuckles to many Brights who would like to think that Deepak Chopra would not be pleased by the scrutiny.

The article:

http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.pdf

or

http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.html*

I'm not sure which is more newsworthy: the article contents or the fact that "bullshit" is a mainstream English word now!


Original Submission

*Update: 12/14 14:18 GMT by mrcoolbp : I updated the second link as per the submitter

 
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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by opinionated_science on Saturday December 12 2015, @12:17PM

    by opinionated_science (4031) on Saturday December 12 2015, @12:17PM (#275383)

    Generally....
    i) Who is making money from it?
    ii) Who is reporting the information?
    iii) When is it reported?
    Is it still plausible considering i-iii)?

    Specifically...
    Is the data from a repeatable experiment?
    Average means nothing without the distribution from which it is drawn.
    What is the distribution?
    Does it break any of the fundamental laws of physics?
    Does it break any of the fundamental laws some of the time (QM)?
    Are all the parameters known? Statistical tests?
    Do the errors sample a known distribution? (Central Limit Theorem).

    I could go on, but most articles don't survive i-iii ;-)

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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday December 12 2015, @12:56PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday December 12 2015, @12:56PM (#275389) Journal

    Does it break any of the fundamental laws some of the time (QM)?

    What exactly are you trying to imply with the (QM) at the end of that question?

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @02:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2015, @02:35PM (#275411)

      Who the fuck knows, his post is so completely off topic that you have to wonder if he even read the summary.

      Unless he's gone meta and is actually providing us with an example of pseudo-profound bullshit.

    • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday December 12 2015, @06:31PM

      by opinionated_science (4031) on Saturday December 12 2015, @06:31PM (#275466)

      quantum mechanics (tongue in cheek!). I'm just not sure we have all the bits ,yet...

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday December 12 2015, @09:42PM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday December 12 2015, @09:42PM (#275552) Journal

        I was already sure that "QM" stood for "quantum mechanics". My question was what you wanted to imply by putting QM in parentheses at the end of that question.
        Note that currently the laws of QM are the fundamental laws of physics. Therefore it would be a logical contradiction to say they violate them.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday December 12 2015, @09:49PM

          by Francis (5544) on Saturday December 12 2015, @09:49PM (#275559)

          Presumably because QM is often times used as a cover for things that blatantly violate one or more laws of physics. Just put vague references to quantum principles in the ad copy and people think there's some actual science.

          Now, it might be that the product works as stated, but it's also a very convenient excuse for not having to adequately explain what's going on.

          Or to put it another way, QM is essentially just a stand in for pseudo-scientific magical thinking.