From STAT: Two professors at the University of Washington will be offering a new course, “Calling Bullshit In the Age of Big Data.” The class will teach students how to recognize instances when scientific data is manipulated to mislead the public.
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Hey, a college class that actually might end up being useful, especially in today’s climate of “alternative facts” and “fake news”!
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Evergreen State, where my son attends, includes this kind of critique in their first-year statistics course. I was very pleased to see it there, though my son, of course, is already very savvy about detecting statistical BS.
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Sorry I can’t give a more complete reference – but it’s fairly easy to find online. It’s called “How to Lie with Statistics”, and it first came out in the 1950’s. It’s very readable, and informative, with lots of illustrations, and shows most of the ways data can be skewed and mis-represented, whether intentionally, or not. I’m surprised at how often data is still presented today in such a blatantly misleading fashion!
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That Course, “How to Lie with Statistics” sounds fascinating. You stated that it first came out in the 1950s. This has cued my interest even further. My father, who just passed away, at the age of 79, in 2013, graduated from College and received a graduate degree in the 1950s. One of all time favorite lines to me even after he did further graduate studies in the 1970s in Sociology was there are three kinds of lies; “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.” I wish he were still alive as I would love to ask if that is where he got that phrase. It seems more true in 2017 than it might have back in the 1950s. So true and more. . .
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Darrell Huff, (1991) How to Lie with Statistics Penguin; New Ed edition, ISBN 0-14-013629-0
Sorry for the confusion! It’s a book, not a course. The original came out in 1954.
You can even find a wiki entry on the book!
As for the quote, I’ve usually seen it attributed to Mark Twain, but wiki says “maybe not”!…..
And, if you wanna see “lie w/statistics”, just look at any psychiatry study!…lol đ-
Thank you so very much. I will try to get that book from Amazon. I can probably bet my father somehow had seen that book as he was an undergraduate in 1954. As far as the “lie with statistics” in psychiatry studies. YES! YES! YES! However, this “lie with statistics” is rampant all over present day medical science and health studies of all specialties. Like so much in this strange world, a lot of that stuff is put out there just to generate fear and eventually greed based income and control and power, etc. It is imperative that we stay wide awake in these times; which is definite opposition to as another blog on this website states; “a sedated society.” I listen a lot and sometimes, I feel some may almost be there; but not quite, not yet, it seems.
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1st lesson. Do SSRIs really correct a brain chemical problem with serotonin? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIjOZq_AUeE
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*LOL*….*LOL*…. clicked on the link, went to youtube, the video opened w/an AD for the *antidepressant” Trintellix!….. i thought it was the *video*!…. *LOL*….
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Sounds like a great course to me. However, the right will say it’s “liberal media bias” and the left will say it’s “right anti-scientific bias.” Each one will come up with their own version of “fake news.”
Has not any one realized that real truth and real answers are neither liberal, conservative, or even moderate and no matter your political or even religious beliefs, you are being manipulated.
I would like to take this course, but I live on the other side of America. -
A bit early to think they might manage to catch the major error of psychiatry, especially in this the age of all things neuro, but kudos for the effort. When psychiatry is basically total BS, people still need to have the how this is so delineated for them.
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The problem with psychiatry is that it tried to be a science; when it really is a combination of art and philosophy. The way modern Western medicine is practiced, it, too tries very hard to be a pure science; when it also has components of art and philosophy. Any good doctor, especially from the pre Big Pharma and insurance age, would have cautioned the patient that true diagnosis is a real “art” and somewhat “intuitive” in nature. A scientist who knows his or “her” stuff will also explain how much the one doing the “experiment” will subjectively affect the outcome; even in the “hard sciences.” Now, of course, when you hear the results of a study in the news; especially of a health or medical subject, that information is conveniently swept “under the rug.” I do not follow those delivering the message. I fault those who gave the message without the full truths to the messenger. Real science needs not only the ability to “replicate” its findings in successive experiments. (Which they rarely seem to do in health or medical studies) but also in the “laboratory” of real life and the real world.
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Real science does everything it can to DISPROVE any hypothesis before accepting it as truth. Science is crappy at proving things true, but very good at proving things false. Every other reasonable hypothesis or explanation needs to be considered and eliminated before a model is accepted as “truth.” And then it’s only true until further data invalidates or modifies it.
Unfortunately, these days “scientists” are allowed to run with biased data and positive results are published and studies disproving popular theories are buried as deep as possible and those profiting from the current “truth” spend time and money discrediting known facts. Even in physical medicine, we’re getting increasingly crappy results, and as for psychiatry, it left the vaguest impression of scientific integrity in the dust decades ago.
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