‘Calling bullshit’: the college class on how not to be duped by the news

Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World, designed and co-taught by the University of Washington professors Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom, begins with a premise so obvious we barely lend it the attention it deserves: “Our world is saturated with bullshit.” Instead, the class operates under the assumption that the structures through which today’s endless information comes to the consumer – algorithms, data graphics, info analytics, peer-reviewed publications – are in many ways as full of bullshit as the fake news we easily recognize as bogus. By teaching ways to find misinformation in the venues many of us consider pristine realms of expertise – peer-reviewed journals such as Nature, reports by the National Institutes of Health, TED Talks – West and Bergstrom highlight the ultimate paradox of the information age: more and more knowledge is making us less and less reasonable.

Source: www.theguardian.com