The Science of Bullsh!t Detection

they're trying my intelligence. I've got the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fact, and they're not really telling you the truth. We have been an international oil company for a hundred and twelve years. We want to transform ourselves into an integrated energy company. It's like, what the fuck are you saying? A lot of what's on the media this bullshit. I think a lot of the politicians are bullshit. I'll tell you what you want

to know and don't do anything about it. So many people seem to think that bullshit only comes from certain sources, you know, advertising, politicians, salesman. Not true. Bullshit is rampant. Is bullshitting simply human nature. Everybody's a bullshit oil is at one point or another, is there even a difference between bullshit and straight up wise? And the thing that I think we all need to do right now is

work to bring people closer together. That we're going to change Facebook's whole mission as a company in order to focus on this. Parents are fullish it teaches, a fullish it clergyman, a fullish it law enforcement people are full of shit? Why is bullshit everywhere? Welcome to Calling Bullshit the podcast about purpose washing, the gap between what an organization says they stand for and what they actually do and what they would need to change to practice what

they preach. I'm your host, Time Montogue, and I've spent over a decade helping organizations define what they stand for, their purpose and then help them to use that purpose to drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately, at a lot of institutions today, there's still a pretty wide gap between word and deed. That gap has a name, bullshit. But, and this is important, bullshit is serious, but it's also

a treatable condition. So when our bullshit detector lights up, we're going to explore everything the organization should do to fix it. Hey, folks, Welcome to season two of Calling BS. In season one, we looked at a number of bullshitting organizations, We developed the BS index, and we worked with our guests to imagine a bunch of different ways to actually fight BS. Here on the show, we define bullshit as the gap between word. Indeed, it's in our intro and

it's what the B S scale is all about. But not everybody defines BS in exactly the same way, and so we thought, let's kick off season two by dedicating an entire episode to the concept of BS itself. What is it? Where does it come from? And at what point does it become dangerous? How can we all keep our BS detectors in fighting shape bull detective? To begin with, let's examine the origins of the phrase. The first surprise,

it doesn't have anything to do with cow boop. The bull in bullshit may actually reference the last name of Obadiah Bull, an Irish lawyer living in London in the late fourteen hundreds who was famous for spouting nonsense. It may also have originated back in the days when the Pope wrote decrees on parchment and authenticated them with a metal seal called a bulla, leading to the shorthand phrase papal bull and shit likely comes from shite, the staff

carried by ancient Scottish warlocks. I'm kidding, Actually, shit likely comes from the Old English word shitta for dung, So no mystery there. But where there is a bit of mystery is when bullshit actually became slang. One thing we know for sure is that T. S. Eliot used the two words side by side in his poem The Triumph

of Bullshit, written in the early nineteen hundreds. More recently, the concept was picked up by moral philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt in his book on Bullshit, which was published in two thousand and five. Frankfort writes that one of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. To see how Frankfort's theory holds up today, we sent our producers Hailey Pascualites and Parker Silzer out to ask New Yorkers what they think. Would you agree

or disagree with the following statement. One of the most common features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Oh yes, no, I'm an optimist. I have always been struck by how much people really care about the truth of the matter. I think a lot of the time people are pretty bad at seeing past the bullshit, but they really care to the symbolism of bullshit is all wool suit. Don't they have the bull there? That's

my case. They they are tress parents transparent in their bullshit. Um, do you agree with the statement one of the most common features in our culture is that there's so much bullshit nowadays? Yeah? Yeah, I agree with that. The government's definitely hiding a lot of things from us so that we don't know about politics everyone. Yeah, it's just everywhere. It's so common, like everyone every company is somewhat like bullshit something the idea of bullshit and bullshit and can

seem harmless or even funny. But as a listener of this show, you know that BS is often used to deceive and confuse in ways that can cause real harm. So why do people b s and why is it so hard to stop it once it starts. To figure this out, I decided to call up a real expert. Hello, I'm John Petric Shelley, Professor of psychology at Wake Forest University. My specific research has really focused on persuasion metic cognitions. Were thinking about thoughts that we have and of course

bullshitting and bullshit detection. John runs the Bullshit Studies Lab. Yeah, that's an actual thing where he designs experiments to test how we're affected by the social world, just basic judgment and decision making. Basically, he tries to understand what influences people looking at external information and social environments as well as our internal biases. But the reason I first got in touch he wrote this book, The Life Changing Science

of Detecting Bullshit. When I first saw that title, I thought, well, why would he write a book when he could just do a podcast? But after I read it, I had to call him up. I I gotta say, I loved your book, not surprisingly maybe given the show, but I noticed you draw a distinction between bullshitting and lying, which seems like an important distinction. Can you just unpack that difference? Yeah? Absolutely. Bullshitting is often confused for lying, but it's very distinct

from lying in some very important ways. So when someone lies to us, the liar is actually concerned about the truth, right, and their objective is to get us to believe something that they don't believe is true themselves. On the other hand, the bullshitter, it doesn't really care at all about the truth. They're not paying attention to it at all. In fact, they have no idea what the truth is. It's weird to me that anybody wouldn't care about something as important

as the truth. But John says, there are two major motives for bullshitting, and one of the motives is to be consistent with our actions and what we say. And we're also motivated to feel justified by the claims that we make and our behaviors. And once you publicly state something, you get a lot of social pressure added to those motivations. As John explained this, my mind immediately jumped to win.

After Trump was sworn in on the National Mall, Sean Spicer told the world this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration period. It most assuredly was not, but the administration wouldn't cave, and then Senior Counselor Kellyanne Conway doubled down bigly on CNN the following day. Why did he do that? It undermines the credibility of the entire White House Press Office. Don't be so don't be

so overly dramatic about it. Chuckle, what you're saying it's a falsehood, and they're giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts. They definitely didn't care about the real numbers. You sent the press secretary out there to utter us falsehood on the smallest pettiest thing. I don't think anybody can blame that. Look, I actually don't think that maybe this is me as a polster chuck and you know data well, I don't think you can prove those numbers

one where the others. There's no way to really quantify crowds. We all know that you can laugh textbook bullshitting. So whereas the liar doesn't believe what it is that they say is true, the bullshit, it really has no idea

whether or not it's true. It's very easy today to say something that's not very well thought out, that's not very well informed, and then to feel as though you have to support it, right, because now you're going to sound inconsistent and you're gonna sound stupid for for communicating something that either we know isn't true or isn't supported by the evidence. And it's very seductive once you publicize it.

So it's it's much better to sort of think collect evidence and and and see whether or not well is is there evidence for against what what my opinion is on the issue. But and so I think those are sort of two major motives, especially once people start communicating their opinions and their beliefs. But the other key distinction here is that society treats liars differently than it treats bullshitters. When people lie to us, there's often a lot of

great negative consequences. You know, we're very unhappy with liars when we catch them, yes, exactly. But but when we know kind of know someone's bullshitting us, we often assume that it's harmless. We pass it off as sort of a mild social offense. But this is where we can't be more wrong. Virtually all of our problems, whether they be personal, interpersonal, professional, or societal, they appeared to stem

from mindless bullshit reasoning and communications. So what I wanted to do was to sort of put something um together that puts the problem with bullshitting front and center, and to call attention to it and to expose how dangerous it can actually be. Right, and I totally agree we underestimate the seriousness of the impact of bullshit. And you list a number of ways that bs can be damaging, in some cases life threatening. And you use a scale. In the book which I love, John uses the fly index.

One fly is harmless, two flies is bad, and three flies dangerous. So harmless might sound something like, you know, I could throw a football over a mountain in two you know, and you get that eye rolling. And in fact, some examples I think of bullshit actually have some benefits. We tell children in the summer at the pool, you know, tye, they put a compound in that swimming pool water to reveal the presence of urine almost immediately, you know, And

as every kid knows, that really isn't true. But I think that's relatively harmless, and it's, if anything, it's potentially useful to the extent that keeps a few is from being in the pool. But then I contrast harmless with the two fly example of bad bullshit. My favorite example of this is did you see her face? Who would vote for a face like that? I think that kind of bullshit it dehumanizes, objectifies women. It suggests that they can't be good leaders unless unless they're attractive. I mean,

what doesn't make much sense. But the three fly example might sound something like this. You know time, I can text while driving without any problems, and and you know what, everyone does it, and so I don't see the problem. Okay. My response that is no, no, no, but no. Not only are these things not all true, but they are able and likely to cause harm and injury to oneself and others to the extent that that you actually believe

it is true. And so to say something like that just completely neglects true your established knowledge and genuine evidence. That would be the more dangerous form of bullshit. Why are we so vulnerable to b s? Why don't we all have better BS detectors? There are two primary reasons for why people are not generally good at the discerning

bullshit from the good stuff. First, most people believe that there somehow immune to bullshit, and actually research suggests that the most confident people are often the most likely to be duped by bullshit. That's why one of the reasons I really love this new show on Netflix Bullshit The

game show with with Howie Mandel. Let's play so that the main contestant is supposed to either answer questions correctly or to convince one of the three challengers that their incorrect answer is actually correct, and if they can either answer correctly or convince one of the three challengers that they're incorrect answers correct, then they can move on to

the next stage and ultimately win a million dollars. But what's interesting is when they bring on each of the three challengers, each one of them talk smack about how good they are detecting BS. Right then the show proceeds and you can see how miserable most people are at actually detecting it. A lot of us have overconfident but underperforming BS detectors, and John says there are a few

reasons for this. I mean, the research in in Cognitive Psychology by Janet Metcalf has shown that people do not study subjects they feel they've already mastered. They stopped, you know, they go onto something else. And and then the second reason is that even before we suspect we might be exposed to bullshit, we failed to ask the right questions. We failed to ask, well, what exactly is the claim?

And then another question that's that's hardly ever asked is how does this person know that this claim is true? So if you ask someone how how do you know

what you're saying is true ty. You know, most people will will tend to be surprised because that's not a common question to ask, and then they'll take a few steps backwards and they'll already start to kind of clean up their first answer, you know, let me give you some of the qualifiers, and and then when you you narrow back down, it's really good to ask how might the claim be wrong? People tend to answer the how

do you know it's true? Only with confirming evidence, So you have to directly ask people and nudge them to consider the ways in which the claim might be wrong and just to draw a line under this for the audience. You make the distinction between why questions and how questions in the book and your thesis is that why questions are a little easier to slip out of than how questions.

How forces somebody to really bring evidence into the conversation. Yeah, usually when you ask why questions, you kind of get

a value laden, sort of a heady, abstract response. But when you focus people on how, it tends to elicit a more concrete response where they, maybe even for the very first time, take a few steps back and say, Okay, well, what what are the actual reasons to have this opinion or this belief, and then you can make a better decision as to whether or not you're really buying what it is that they're selling. Right in the book, you you coined a term which I really liked, which is

bull ability. I assume it's a comparison to gullibility. Yeah, this is This is a word that I made up. So a gullible person is likely to believe something, you know, despite the signs of dishonesty. Somebody who's especially bulletble, we would say that, well, they tend to be a relatively lazy thinker who doesn't even care about the signs of dishonesty.

And one of my favorite examples of this has to do with a clip that sixty minutes aired in two thousand seven of Bernie made Off kind of sitting around and recruiting new investors and his hedge fund, and one of the things he said was, I'm very close with the regulators, so I'm not trying to say that they can't you know that what they do is bad. And he was talking about the sec You know, in today's regulatory environment, it's virtually impossible to to violate rules. When

this is something that the public really doesn't understand. But you it's impossible for you to go into for a violation to go in detected, certainly not for a considerable periodyt of talk it. It's impossible for a violation to go undetected, you know, certainly not for a considerable period of time. Right, Well, that clearly wasn't true. I mean, made off proved that for eighteen years, made off truly

as a cautionary tale. Everyone was investing and made off, so no one really thought to look at the facts. And this is where things get sticky. Even people with the most discerning minds want to belong. And when John brought up a study done in the nineteen forties, I realized that this desire can be even stronger than our sense of right and wrong. The experiment was conducted by the psychologist Solomon Ash. He brought in one participant for

a number of trials. This one real participant would be joined by a handful of assistants or confederates posing as other participants, and they would set it up such that the actual participant always thought they were late to experiment, and there was one seat open, and each trial in the experiment just consisted of a very obvious answer to a question. They were shown a line of a certain length and then presented with three other lines labeled A, B or C. And one of these lines was exactly

the same length as the original line. The other two mismatches were completely wrong, very obvious. And what would happen is the first four or five confederates working with the experimenter would start to respond incorrectly intentionally to these trials, and the actual participant would look dumbfounded and be like, what in the world's checking their glasses and kind of squinting, and and they knew that the response that was verbally

given by the other confederates was wrong. But what Nash found was that people tend to feel pressure to go along with the group. In other words, even when the real participant clearly saw the wrong answer being given by everyone else, they still went along with it. They did not go along with the group when they had a chance to respond privately, but when they had to respond publicly, they tended to go along. They tended to conform to the group. So what is that about, Well, especially when

situations are ambiguous, you can even magnify this difference. When it's not clear what the the The answer is people conform to the group. Even more so, we tend to think that the group knows something that we don't. But what's wilder to me is that even when the other people in the group are complete strangers to us, our fear of group projection can cause us to override indisputable facts.

All of the participants were complete strangers, but they were peers, And you know, if you get peers together, even peers that you don't know personally, there's that general sense of pressure to go along with the group because there's a fear of being rejected, a fear of being avoided. It's much more impactful than most people would believe. So what does this say about the proliferation of BS in our society? Even when we see it, it's hard to call it out.

The Ash experiment is like the snowflake on the tip of the iceberg of harm that can be done when people go along with bs that they privately disagree with. I'm guessing that this is part of why whistleblowers that high BS companies are so few and far between. How can we expect to fight the rising tide of real BS when it's so hard for us to call BS on the length of an arbitrary line. How can we trust anything or anyone if this is the default setting

on our internal BS detector. Answers to these questions and more right after the break. All right, so now we're pushing into just another area of interest for us. There have been a lot of many assertions in the media, in particular that we're actually experiencing a crisis of trust in the world, especially among young people. First of all, have you have you seen any of those assertions and do you agree, and if so, do you feel like BS is one of the culprits I I do think

are late millennials and Gen zs. They I mean, they grew up hearing about concerns with the environment. Even I sort of our late generation exerts, you know, we grew up, you know, concerned about greenhouse gases and aerosol spray cans and things like that. And I think it's developed a more socially conscious group than than ever before. And I think there's a little bit of evidence that tend to

have a better memory for bullshit and lies. I mean, this sort of the underpinnings I think of cancel culture, um I think there are some benefits to it. I mean, what we would usually call that in social psychology is accountability. When you have to justify, you know, you have to justify your beliefs in your opinions. People tend to uh feel feel that social pressure and they don't bullshit as much.

You know, if if someone like Nike President and CEO John Donahoe or Phil Knight, you know, again, if they say we're gonna address the carbon footprint problem by doing this, We're gonna address sweatshop problems by doing that. If they don't do it, you know, there's a major base of the consumers that are not going to be happy and they'll cancel them. It's basic accountability, but I think it's one of the major things that is going to combat

the unwanted effects of bullshit. Yeah, we completely agree. I think that's a good segue point to some some questions that I have that directly relate to the work that we're trying to do on this podcast, because you know, our show was was born out of reflections on the attack on the US Capitol and the role that bullshit as we define it played in its specifically fomented by

by our friends at Facebook. You know, they claim that their purpose as a company is to empower all of us to build community and bring the world closer together. And meanwhile, what they're really doing is feeding us deceptive and polarizing content that clearly in some cases whips us into a violent frenzy. And so it's that gap between what they say they stand for and the actions that they're actually taking that we define as bs on a show. So what do you think of our definition, because in

some ways it seems very much the same. I sense a kinship with your work, but is it in some ways different? I think what what you are actually hitting on is is a special case of bullshit. In most cases, I think you're hitting on what we call pseudo profound bullshit. Pseudo profound bullshit or flowery, catchy language that can be hard to decipher. Is everywhere in the marketing landscape, and one a company's purpose is treated as marketing, it can

fall into this category as well. It's clever language because it could it could actually mean all sorts of things hard to pin down exactly. It doesn't have to mean what you think it means, or maybe it could. Here's where it's really clever though, if you ask for clarification, and now I can gauge what you think it should mean, you know, and I could say, yeah, you know, you

got it, that's what it means. I recall this. This this classic conversation between the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and Deepark Chopra, and Darkens challenged Chopra to explain the mystification of quantum mechanics in aging reversal sort of theory. Where did the quantum theory come into that? Oh, it's just a metaphor. Just like an electron or a photon is an indivisible unit of information and energy. Thought is an

indivisible unit of consciousness. So it's an it's a metaphor for very unit and nothing to do with quantum theory as in physics. So I think quantum theory has a lot of things to say about observer effect. There are a school of physicists who believe that quantum leaps, for example, are examples of discontinuity and creativity, and consciousness is also an example of discontinuity, and that healing may be a

biological phenomenon that relies on biological creativity. So it sounds like a sort of poetic use of the word discontinuity. It's it's actually confusion, isn't it to bring in quantum theory other than as a metaphor. It designs that you're both doing to a metaphor and a little tinge of something like what physicists are talking about as well. Dark And it's kind of accepted Chopra's retreat. I mean, Choper

just moved the goalposts. So this is this is the problem with this type of language, and you see it especially in business, in the corporate world. It's just it's just everywhere. Yeah, And that's what we're trying to wade into and hopefully clarify for some folks, because we have our own our own scale which is slightly different. Rather than measuring BS in flies, our scale is a hundred point scale, zero being the best zero gap between word indeed zero bs and one being the worst total bullshit.

So we rate all the companies that we feature on the show. And as I read your okay, I realized that on our scale we might be combining B s ing and lying um and lying might live on the upper end of all our scale. So what's your take on that is knowingly b sing in that way the same as lying, or is there a distinction to be made there? Yeah? Well, I I think, well, there's nothing wrong with your scale. It's perfect for expressing a social

perceiver's guestimate of lying. I think, because once it's intentional and you know something isn't true, then I think you're moving into two lying and further away from bullshitting. But yeah, I think I think the scale of sort of like, well, what you know based on what they say and what they actually do. I think it's very useful scale You've got. Thank you. I appreciate that. So do you have a daughter,

what what advice do you give her? Or would you give any young people today who faced this you know what feels like a rising tide of b s in the world. How should they think about fighting this fight? Yeah? Well, you much of my daughter. I mean, she's one of my best bullshit detectors. I'm not permitted to bullshit at all.

I remember when she was four, for whatever reason, I told her, you know, when I played high school football, we won all of our games, and at age four, she's yeah, no, come on, now, you did not win all of your games. You know. But what I would advise her and anyone to do now is just to sort of take a step back. When you hear something, you read something, you see something that may or may not be true, think about the consequences that it has

if you actually believe it. What consequence would it have for your behavior? How might it change your decisions? How might it change your beliefs in your opinions? And then to simply start asking questions. You could kind of flip some of those questions onto the self and say, well, who is telling me this, you know, how do they know it, how could they possibly know it? And what are they trying to sell me? What agenda do they have?

These are like just basic critical thinking skills. But but I would say, just stick with the claim, you know, don't attack the person, attack the claim and then suggest, Okay, I used to think of it that way too, sort of misery loves company kind of approach. Well yeah, yeah, yeah, because it's just an easier pill to swallow if it's just kind of an error and reasoning than it was like, oh,

they're just misinformed and they're guilty of bullshitting. But another thing I think is good to admit was that we we all contribute our own amount of bullshit, and to not double down on the bullshit, but just kind of admit it when we're guilty of it. Finally, be ready, you know, be ready to model a better behavior, you know, be willing to provide and offer evidence based reasoning to

counter and combat bullshit. You know, the hope and the dream is to really reduce bullshit and it's unwanted effects. But it's gotta have to be a collective effort. Yeah, we completely agree. You know, there is a whole generation of young people who are taking a very activist stance on these things. They're not putting up with the bullshit anymore, and that's one of the audiences that we most want to provide information for on this podcast. I love the

concept of your podcast. I think it shines a lot of sunlight on problems, and I believe that what we need to advocate is treating bullshit like lies. If we treat bullshit, even though I say, Okay, well it's bullshit, don't assume that it doesn't have a negative effect. Don't that it's harmless. John, this was a fantastic conversation. I want to thank you for coming on the show today,

al Ti, thanks for having me. So this is the part of the show when I would usually rate an organization on the B S scale, But instead of giving a score today, I want to talk a little bit more about how the BS scale actually the works. We define bullshit as the gap between word indeed, and we measure that gap by looking at the evidence, talking with experts who can help us understand the actions that companies

are taking to live or not their purpose. Once we've asked as many questions as we can, we construct the final score using these three guide posts. One action. Does an organization's purpose exist to solve a real problem? Are they taking concrete action to make it real in the world or is it just flowery pseudo profound business speak. Are they ignoring glaring gaps between word indeed or taking steps to remediate them. Are they considering all of their stakeholders.

Looking at actions helps us to gauge intention. If we find that an organization is willing to correct course or engage with criticism, we can see their real intentions shining through. To transparency, we always look to see how much information a company discloses. Do they publish their goals as well as track progress toward them. Are they as quick to call out their own shortcomings as they are to claim their victories. When an organization is truly purpose led, they

hold themselves accountable by showing their work. And three, harm a gap between word indeed that threatens democracy or the future of the entire planet will always be high BS. In this way, we're super aligned with John and his fly index. More harm always means a higher BS score. And if you're a future or current purpose led business leader or a conscious consumer, here are three takeaways from John that will keep your BS detector in great shape.

Detective One, ask how, and not why. Why questions are easier to answer vaguely, but how questions cut right through the b S. How is this company making its purpose real? How is it seeing to its stakeholder needs? Two? Don't attack the bullshitter, attack the claim challenging b S shouldn't feel personal. If your attack feels personal, it's more likely to be ignored. B S is a treatable condition, but only if the b s R wants to treat it, So bring them in on it, Engage them as an ally.

And three, don't get swept up in group think. We are social creatures, and John showed us that there is a powerful urge within all of us to just get along and go along, keep your personal BS detector sharp, and don't assume that if it's going off, there's something wrong with you. A lot of folks are going along with all the BS in their lives just because they don't want to go against the group or ruffle any feathers.

Come on, get out there and ruffle some feathers. And if you want in on the fight against b s, subscribe to the Calling Bullshit podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to people speaking to your ears. Thanks to our production team Hannah Beal, Amanda Ginsburg, Andy Kim d s Moss Hailey, Pascalites, Parker Silzer, Basil Soaper, and me jehan Zulu. Calling Bullshit was created by co Collective and it's hosted by Me Time Monto. You thanks for listening.