The World is Awash in Bullshit

http://blog.themistrading.com/2017/01/the-world-is-awash-in-bullshit/

It’s from The Bull$hit Syllabus, which was created by University of Washington Professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, who are trying to combat The Bull$hit. The syllabus includes questions and standards for data scientists to think about and use.
They believe that with the advent of “Big Data” and tools to deal with it, the amount of BS in the world has really risen too much. It has become too easy for BS to be taken out of context, and to be spread and made to go “viral.”  Big Data has given us ginormous datasets to study and manipulate. While we might not be quick to draw conclusions from a smaller data set, we have become very comfortable putting credence to implications and patterns in big data sets. Bergstrom explains:
Before big data became a primary research tool, testing a nonsensical hypothesis with a small dataset wouldn’t necessarily lead you anywhere. But with an enormous dataset, he says, there will always be some kind of pattern. “It’s much easier for people to accidentally or deliberately dredge pattern out of all the data,” he says. “I think that’s a bit of a new risk.”