Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World Paperback – 20 April 2021

Even when you are a researcher it is always helpful to cover these topics in order to tune your own critical thinking. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and finished it in a day! The chapter about publication bias is really quite worrying and is serious motivation for good evidence based practice and strong statistical knowledge. A must read for students as the topics are explained so well.

In the first three chapters, the authors lay out their motivations for writing the book and set some foundations. Where does bullshit come from? Why is it so difficult to get rid of it? What's the role of internet and social media in the spread of misinformation? The proposed narrative is quite compelling. Even if you don't fully agree that social media had a negative impact on how we perceive the world, it is difficult not to see the need for education on how to process the sheer amount of information we are exposed to.The middle part explores the main fallacies that can arise when using data to support an argument. The difficult relationship between correlation and causation, selection bias, data visualisation and overfitting are the main themes explored here. As well as giving a great explanation of the basic ideas, the authors manage to explain quite technical concepts, such as Berkson's Paradox and the observation selection effect, in an easy and comprehensible way.Chapter 9 stands out as an outlier, exploring one of the authors academic interests, the "Science of science". How does science works, what are its problems? Why do scientists spend their time catfighting on Twitter and why, nevertheless, science works?The final part is a summary of the presented ideas, and proposes a strategy on how to spot and refute BS, without becoming a "well, actually" guy.While someone with training in quantitative research might not learn much from this book, it is a great resource for the rest to deal with a data-driven, information-flooded world. I always thought that studying statistics and probability would equip people with exceptional instruments to process information. It turns out that this book gets you a long way there (even if not completely there, obviously), without a single equation. Also, it's great fun.

I have had to rewrite my review as one of the words in the title breaks Amazon rules.I like to think I have a very excellent lie radar.I am forever saying that something is just not true, however I can’t always explain how and why in a learned rational way.Thanks to this book that is going to change.I know that many Govt. bodies and people like Big Pharma are using “Big Data”, statistics, to impress us, the general public, into believing what we are told. But we need to know how to spot the rot and argue back.This is a serious book written by scientists to help readers be able to separate the onslaught of facts from the fiction.The book starts by revisiting the time the printing press was invented. There were concerns that a proliferation of fluff would now be available and that much of important information would be obscured. Until the printing press only very scholarly and religious texts were available as they needed to be handwritten, taking up much time and effort.Now works that could only be read by the top tier of society was now available to more and more ordinary readers.Later this is followed by TV, Radio and now the Internet.Many many ways to spread information and misinformation.So more and more important to be able to think clearly and to be able to explain how or why some fact just isn’t correct.I am still reading this book. It needs concentration and I want to be able to take it all in.This is a timely book……while we listen to the current POTUS refute anything he doesn’t agree with as “Fake news” and our UK Prime Minister tries to govern us through a pandemic while mostly talking a stream of babbling rubbish and somehow getting away with it.Our Govt like to reel out graphs and statistics to show us and we pretend it is real information. It is isn’t. Even the way the numbers of Covid deaths are collected have been changed 2 or 3 times to make them seem less.A valuable book to read at this time.

I wanted to finish this book before reviewing it, but I am halfway and I am so impressed and in some way mind-blown but so many interesting things that I have read. This book is very easy too read, tons of examples, a little bit of humour and lots of interesting connections to be made. I just love it, really hope as many people can read it and see how informative it is and it describes daily things we all make as humans, but we just don't pay attention to them. Even more than that, with all the fake news and misleading information that we received this year, it seems to give a glimpse of understanding and clarity. Thank you!

Interesting book. I am not a big lover to read, but decided give myself a portion of this. My friend advised me to buy and read this book. Just started, I find that the author and me, about the same thinking. So I am very surprised, and decided to read up till the end. This kind of book I never read before in my live. Something very different to others.So I reccomend you to get one and enjoy.