… “Calling Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World,” designed and co-taught by 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.” And so, every week for 12 weeks, the professors expose “one specific facet of bullshit,” doing so in the explicit spirit of resistance. “This is,” they explain, “our attempt to fight back.” …
The reason for the class’s existence comes down to a simple and somewhat alarming reality: Even the most educated and savvy consumer of information is easily misled in today’s complex information ecosystem. Calling Bullshit is not dedicated to teaching students that Fox News promotes “fake news” or that National Enquirer headlines are fallacious. 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. CONT.
James McWilliams, Pacific Standard