Shane Littrell, PhD

Bullshitology | Shane Littrell | Substack Bullshitology explores why smart people can believe dumb things. Blending cognitive science, skepticism, and snark to correct our intellectual blind spots and improve everyone’s bullshit detectors. Cl...

Just launched a Substack about the science of nonsense; why people believe wild conspiracy theories, fall for propaganda, and speak fluent corporate gibberish.

If you're into science, critical thinking, or just need a break from the 🗑️🔥🌎, come hang out: bullshitology.substack.com

The pancreatic cancer vaccine trials have been so promising, this would have been a literal life saver for so many and now its gone. I cant tell you how heart breaking this is. Horror after horror with this administration.

The inciting incident is that someone steals his manuscript and kills his funding.

Bullshitology | Shane Littrell | Substack Bullshitology explores why smart people can believe dumb things. Blending cognitive science, skepticism, and snark to correct our intellectual blind spots and improve everyone’s bullshit detectors. Cl...

Just launched a Substack about the science of nonsense; why people believe wild conspiracy theories, fall for propaganda, and speak fluent corporate gibberish.

If you're into science, critical thinking, or just need a break from the 🗑️🔥🌎, come hang out: bullshitology.substack.com

Apparently so. 🪦👨‍🔬📈

pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...

Man died in Cambridgeshire after fake deworming drug cancer claim Lee Redpath bought the drug - not licensed for humans - from a supplier in Ukraine, an inquest hears.

Man died after fake deworming drug cancer claims bbc.com/news/article...

"...no proven benefit for taking fenbendazole for treating cancer in humans".

This BS pushed by online influencers & popular (very) manosphere podcasters.

We can't let the bunk win!

How effective are user corrections on social media, and does adding a link to a fact check improve effectiveness?

In piece led by @sachaltay.bsky.social we find corrections have small effects, adding a fact-check unlikely to make them more effective misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/the-... 1/6

Guess my next study will be on "pupillary bullshitting." 😉

One of the most valuable non-science courses I ever took was "Logic," an undergrad philosophy course. The sections on propositional logic, predicate logic, and logical fallacies (formal & informal) made me the pedantic ass that I am today. 😂🧠. 10/10 would highly recommend.

Voices of the Vaccine Injured - Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs

RFK JR’s crank organization Children’s Health Defense has bought itself a grievance-airing session inside in the US Senate. Witnesses are RFK Jr’s longtime antivax activist friends, including bullshit artists with retracted papers like Brian Hooker.

www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittee...

Kinda weird that anime is less attractive than cosplay. So, watching Goku is lame but dressing up like him is fine? I sense a confounding variable here. Maybe they should've created separate categories for "Cosplay (in bedroom)" and "Cosplay (in public)."

New paper accepted! 🎉

Worried about the overuse of terms like “gaslighting”, “boundaries”, or “trauma”?

@almagro.bsky.social and I are too. In this paper, we explore the epistemic and ethical cocerns of therapy-speak and how it relates to epistemic and affective injustice.

Preprint ⬇️

Ha, it's just b/c my arm tends to quickly flex at the elbow when I have this jerk (like a biceps curl) and it happens so fast and w/ such force that it sends the back of my hand directly into my face. 🤜😮

a woman is sitting on a couch wearing a white t-shirt with a picture of a woman on it . ALT: a woman is sitting on a couch wearing a white t-shirt with a picture of a woman on it .

I sometimes have hypnopompic jerks. I have to sleep with my arm under my pillow or I risk waking up in the morning by punching myself in the face.

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you...

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you...

There's a very strong negative correlation between LinkedIn posts that start with, "A lot of people have been asking me lately..." and the chances that anyone has ever actually asked them whatever they're claiming in the bullshit-soaked post that follows.

There's a very strong negative correlation between LinkedIn posts that start with, "A lot of people have been asking me lately..." and the chances that anyone has ever actually asked them whatever they're claiming in the bullshit-soaked post that follows.

(1/6) A small but annoying % of ppl use AI to generate fraudulent answers for open-ended survey Qs. So, in an effort to fight 🔥w/ 🔥, I asked GPT-o3 for some suggestions to help me identify LLM responses. Haven't tested them yet but some look promising. Here's a 🧵of what it came up with:

(6/6) Finally, it took one last opportunity to crap all over the Q's that I usually include 😅 before offering a helpful closing summary. Haven't tried any of these suggestions yet but figured I'd post them here in the hopes others might also find them helpful. 🧠

(5/6) It also recommended some helpful concrete Q's that I could include in future surveys:

(4/6) It also compared closed-ended vs open-ended approaches:

(3/6) Next, it generated a list of suggestions for approaches that might work better, with realistic examples and rationales behind each recommendation:

(2/6) Here, it describes how my usual open-ended checks don't quite go far enough for helping me identify LLM responses:

(1/6) A small but annoying % of ppl use AI to generate fraudulent answers for open-ended survey Qs. So, in an effort to fight 🔥w/ 🔥, I asked GPT-o3 for some suggestions to help me identify LLM responses. Haven't tested them yet but some look promising. Here's a 🧵of what it came up with:

a close up of a man 's face with a wwe logo on his ear ALT: a close up of a man 's face with a wwe logo on his ear

Happy Canada Day to all my buddies/guys/friends up north!

Wine-tasting: it's junk science Noses have been put out of joint in the wine industry, with experiments showing that even experts can't always tell cheap plonk from grand cru. David Derbyshire reports on the chemistry behind the tas...

Somewhat related: www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Behind Trump’s 2024 Victory, a More Racially and Ethnically Diverse Voter Coalition Pew Research Center’s in-depth study of its survey respondents who voted in the 2024 election examines turnout, voting patterns and demographics.

Very interesting Pew Research findings on demographic voting patterns from the 2024 election: www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...

<em>British Journal of Social Psychology</em> | Wiley Online Library Recent psychological research has identified important individual differences associated with receptivity to bullshit, which has greatly enhanced our understanding of the processes behind susceptibil....

More on "evasive bullshitting" here, for anyone interested:

bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

www.researchgate.net/publication/...