Dr. Venus Nicolino (AKA "Dr. V") is the host of Marriage Bootcamp Reality Stars, and previously starred on Bravo's LA Shrinks. She's been featured on Real Housewives of New Jersey, Millionaire Matchmaker, Steve, Watch What Happens Live, The Dr. Oz Show, Rachael Ray and The Real.Dr. V holds a Masters Degree from New York University in Counseling Psychology, a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology and a Doctorate Degree in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology. She lives in Los Angeles, California with her husband and children. I guess this is Sagan's Demon-Haunted World for 2021? Both authors go through the most common ways that data is used to bullshit people and to create narratives. It grew out of a university course (Calling Bullshit) and goes over ways data is misrepresented, chosen, how sometimes counter-intuitively data can be interpreted, how people trying to sell you stuff or ideas can manipulate data to tell the story they want to tell, There is a surfeit of ‘trade books’ about science which promote one ‘thing’ (confidence, a particular hormone, the effects of a single personality, one particular substance) and ignore everything else. You can argue that science is obliged to tease out particular factors and discount the rest. It can be an interesting read. If I told you that in the Andes, they’d discovered a new species of humanoid that lived only 30,000 years ago, would you be certain that was bullshit? Or what if I told you that Honeywell are working on trapped ions because they think they are likely to prove to be more effective qubits than superconducting loops? The problem is with how the media has trained us throughout our lives. It makes our swallowing bullshit virtually inevitable. Look, I’d even read The God Particle, but not even I suspected the whole world would get quite so excited when the Higgs Boson was discovered. And this is because we live in a world where people are more interested in facts than narratives, in whats over whys. Even things that are definitely ‘true’ become bullshit when we have no context with which to understand them in. I mean, if you can’t tell me what the Higgs Boson does while it is grazing in the particle zoo, maybe your knowing it ‘exists’ doesn’t really matter. So here's the beginning...I have some posts in mind and I'm open to suggestions. If there's something you want me to speak on particular, let me know and I'll do so thoughtfully.

The authors (who teach a course based on this material) observe that one significant issue with science is the specialized language and insider techniques that make it impenetrable to the outsider, something that doesn’t apply so much in other fields such as advertising or politics. And precisely because of that barrier, “science-y” language has been co-opted by other disciplines intent on bullshitting. Well, more privileged people are also more confident. Ditto for athletes with bodies that allow them to excel better than my own. Indeed, if confidence isn’t based on something tangible, isn’t it really just overconfidence? So simply telling people to “be more confident” may not be based on much at all.He ought to look in the mirror as to who is trying to debase themselves to protect ‘the narrative.’ Intriguingly, the entire literature on information literacy - with a nearly 100 year heritage - is missing from this book.

I will say that when you are in a genuine conflict situation, maintaining condifence is crucial to securing victory. They call it “morale” in that case. You do also need a gun or whatever is appropriate to your conflict athough. The authors are expert guides. Carl Bergstrom is a theoretical and evolutionary biologist who researches how information flows through biological and social networks. Jevin West is a data scientist who studies misinformation in science and society. Together, they teach a popular undergraduate class offered under the same name by the University of Washington. The tutorial system displayed on a bi-weekly basis who was intelligent and hard working. The conversation at hall dinner served the same purpose. The only snobbery I encountered was intellectual, people tended to sneer at those who only took an interest in their own subject, or who couldn’t keep up.

While they were quoting Postman, I think it would have been nice if they had also quoted one of his explanations for why we are drowning in quite so much bullshit. And that is that a lot of bullshit comes down to us from things that really don’t matter in our lives at all, but that we have been made to believe we are deeply interested in. For example, a recent story has it that Melania Trump has a body double and that it was this double who was out and about campaigning with Donald during the election campaign. Even if this story was 100% verifiable, hand on Bible, true, and even if tomorrow video emerged of an actress named Jane Smithers, or something, pulling on a Melania-type dress and fake boobs – what possible difference could it make to any of our lives? It would just be one more crazy thing that happened in the Trump White House. That is, in a White House that has specialised in ensuring a dozen crazy things have happened every day for four years and all before morning tea on each of those days. Even if it was true, how would you knowing that bit of truth about the fake Melania change your world? I started this book while waiting for Abbu outside the ICU. The book ends today. So, today again I went to the hospital in front of the ICU. One, simply odds calculations, which a person may be accurate or inaccurate depending on the person and the activity.

Ranging from honesty to happiness, Bad Advice touches on different aspects of the available situations and explains the bad and good sides of them in detail. Besides, it helps me feel fulfilled after finishing each chapter and motivates me to explore more. The rise in cancer misinformation is part of a wider problem with online falsehoods. Like the equally dangerous explosion in anti-vaccine myths, cancer untruths have an impact on both our physical wellbeing and on the public understanding of science and medicine. In a sea of sound and fury, discerning between the reputable and the repugnant isn’t always easy, but there are excellent resources available for patients and their families. Well-researched guides by Cancer Research UK and the US National Cancer Institute are enlightening and authoritative. I found it too dense - to many examples and cramming too much in. I also found it had a negative lilt to it making, it even heavier. A lot of the stats methods I've learned before and it was fine to read about them again, but I didn't feel like they were effectively training the reader to be able to call bullshit. Currently reading this one, but noticed that no one has yet dropped the link for the professors' course at UW, which has been available online since before the book was finished: https://www.callingbullshit.org/sylla... I'd also like to add some context. When you’re heartbroken, what do you hear? You can’t love anyone until you love yourself. When someone’s hurt you? Nobody can make you feel bad without your permission. When you’re just a little too positive? Expectations lead to disappointment.

My experience is that generally speaking, the people most likely to be blessed with that most precious of resources – confidence – are those most likely to deny its relevance. People stigmatized by class, gender, race, physical appearance or disability seldom do this. White, male, middle-class, western, public-school-educated men (all like me except the class and education bits) are often blind to the crippling and undermining effects of low confidence and enormously advantageous effects of high confidence. Most of this book is stuff that I (and probably many readers) am familiar with intellectually but don't necessarily apply reflexively whenever I read the news or hear a statistic. So for me, this book was really useful in that it primed me to intentionally be on the defensive about common misrepresentations in statistics and data visualization. There is increasing concern that such fictions risk eclipsing reputable information. Macmillan Cancer Support recently appointed a nurse specifically to debunk online stories, prompting the Lancet Oncology to comment: “How has society got to this point, where unproven interventions are being chosen in preference to evidence-based, effective treatments? Unfortunately, disinformation and – frankly – lies are widely propagated and with the same magnitude as verified evidence.” Radiotherapy and chemotherapy are dismissed by charlatans as poisons, imperilling lives This is a very important book to read right now. I highly recommend reading it as soon as possible. What Bergstrom and his colleague accomplishes in "Calling Bullshit" is a blueprint of all the various ways in which lies, exaggerations, contextualizations and data misrepresentation flood the media sphere and have completely corrupted truth. TV therapist takes off the bangle bracelets and talks real shit about the insidious bad advice we grew up, breaking it down by the line item like a trash-talking friend pulling you away from the drain you're circling? Get into it.