Hi I'm Dr. Kelly O'Donnell and my course
is Detecting Bullshit in the Modern Age
Well detecting bullshit is important for
everyone because we all exist in this
world of information. We'll be building
on these skills that you practice in
your seminar three science forward'
classes, we'll talk about statistics
we'll talk about assessing risk. A lot of
skills that are really just important to
be an informed citizen. We're going to
take a particular perspective. We're
going to think scientifically, we will be
looking at data that exists out in the
world that people interpret in ways that
are incorrect or misleading. A lot of our
examples will come from from the
sciences and academia. Well there are a
lot of examples of bullshit. A lot of
pseudo scientific medical fields, like
homeopathy, a lot of examples you can you
can buy a machine that changes the bond
angle of water which you can't actually
do. You will hear a lot of bullshit that
has to do with climate science
particularly from today's politicians.
People who think that carbon dioxide
should just be we shouldn't worry about
it it's it's it's the gas of life and
these are things that when we hear them
they should raise red flags. We live in a
world where we are inundated with
information it's coming from everywhere,
social media, your friends, the news,
politicians and a lot of it is trying to
trick us. So with this course we're
going to practice those skills that
allow us to figure out which information
is reliable and which information is
just bullshit.
