Sherlock would be proud. Take the time to read down this U of Washington course outline on “bullshit” detection in academia and society in general. The online class is closed but plans for expansion are promised. New article from StatNews.

Bitemarkers beware.

Excerpt from the syllabus.

Week 10. The ethics of calling bullshit. Where is the line between deserved criticism and targeted harassment? Is it, as one prominent scholar argued, “methodological terrorism” to call bullshit on a colleague’s analysis? What if you use social media instead of a peer-reviewed journal to do so? How about calling bullshit on a whole field that you know almost nothing about? Pubpeer. Principles for the ethical calling of bullshit. Differences between being a hard-minded skeptic and being a domineering jerk.

• Alan Sokal (1996) A physicist experiments with cultural studies. Lingua Franca 6:62-64.
• Jennifer Ruark (2017) Anatomy of a hoax. Chronicle of Higher Education
• Robert Service (2014) Nano-Imaging Feud Sets Online Sites Sizzling. Science 343:358.
• Susan Fiske (2016) Mob Rule or Wisdom of Crowds? APS Observer preliminary draft. Also read commentaries [1] and [2].
• Michael Blatt (2016) Vigilante Science. Plant Physiology 169:907-909.