Calling Bullshit: Skepticism in a Data-Driven World, Skeptical Inquirer Presents

We live in a hyper-quantified world, awash in numbers, statistics, figures, algorithms, and data graphics. Quantitative data can be incredibly powerful, conveying objectivity and strengthening arguments. At the same time, it can be easily misused to overwhelm and persuade us of things that just aren’t true. How can we mere mortals possibly tell the difference?
Thursday, May 26 at 7 p.m. ET, on the next Skeptical Inquirer Presents live online event, biologist Carl Bergstrom and data science expert Jevin West will help us navigate this data-driven world and know when it’s time to call bullshit.
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Bergstrom and West will explain why an advanced degree in statistics or computer science isn’t necessary for seeing through the vast majority of quantitative misinformation. Drawing on examples of misleading claims from the COVID-19 pandemic, misuses of artificial intelligence, and other world events, they will empower us to push back when confronted by numerical arguments and data-hungry technologies. By focusing attention on the data sources and their weaknesses, we’ll learn how to look past the hype and hold our own against those who would sell us digital snake oil.
Free registration is required to take part in this live Zoom event, so sign up right now.

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Carl Bergstrom is a professor of biology at the University of Washington (UW) and a faculty member at the UW Center for an Informed Public. Trained in evolutionary biology, mathematical population genetics, and infectious disease epidemiology, Carl is perhaps best known for crossing field boundaries and integrating ideas across the span of the natural and social sciences.
Jevin West is an associate professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. He is the cofounder of the new Center for an Informed Public at UW aimed at resisting strategic misinformation, promoting an informed society, and strengthening democratic discourse. He is also the cofounder of the DataLab at UW and Data Science Fellow at the eScience Institute.
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The Center for Inquiry (CFI) Tampa Bay http://bit.ly/2ljTe9I is a nonprofit educational, advocacy, and research organization, a regional office in Tampa, headquartered in Amherst, New York, with executive offices in Washington, D.C. It is also home to the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and the Council for Secular Humanism.
The Center for Inquiry strives to foster a secular society based on reason, science, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values. Visit CFI on the web at centerforinquiry.org.