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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!
*Update: 12/14 14:18 GMT by mrcoolbp : I updated the second link as per the submitter
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday December 13 2015, @12:57PM
try reading publications as part of your living. Some highly educated people can write some completely wrong stuff, in top flight journals.
however, not good for your career to point this out! So by the time you are past being discredited, you probably don't care unless you have the resources to challenge it.
Hence, "repeatable" in my list.
It is humbling thought that it took 400 years to work out the correct orbit of mercury (say) from Newton, and he was no slouch....
One should therefore expect there are many other things we are yet to learn, and to keep looking...