Talk about a timely book – it seems like the world is full of misinformation recently and maybe that is why I was attracted to this title.
The author, an experimental social psychologist and professor of psychology at Wake Forest University, got into the field of bullshit analysis after being inspired by a short essay on the prevalence on bullshit in society and the damage it does. Here he has collected research and information on how to not only detect bullshit, but how to defend against it and even (if you have the courage) to call it out.
Beyond the review of the Scientific Method and the calls to trust in science you can find some great examples of all sorts of bullshit that you find in life today, and some great stories from the past to illustrate the danger of thinking without critical analysis. I especially enjoyed the modern examples, and the author can’t help but point out a few politicians (I’ll bet you can guess which ones) and celebrities as especially guilty of slinging bullshit.
The book is structured in a logical way, with plenty of footnotes and research to back up his arguments (as you would expect in a book on this topic). I read through it pretty quickly, and with the exception of the last section – a sort of call-to-arms to eradicate bullshit across the world (which sounded a little naive to me) – it was a decent book on thinking a little more about what you are hearing and how to best analyze it.
I think it will be difficult to keep his advice in mind over time, and that is directly related to his point that thinking critically is hard work, and one of the reasons that we see so much un-checked bullshit around. This will take some effort, but I’ll do my best to keep his points in mind in the future.
Next is Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer.
