The Ig Nobel awards for improbable research are a bit of fun but that doesn't mean that the papers which win the awards are frivolous.
Some are serious research. Take for example, the paper, "On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit".
![You can make contradictory statements and run failed businesses and still command a large number of believers.](/web/20161020062303im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/r/f/o/q/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gs1b8k.png/1476579175336.jpg)
This should be compulsory reading for everyone in the public service.
"Bullshit", the authors point out, is distinct from lying.
Lying entails a deliberate manipulation and subversion of truth (as understood by the liar) whereas bullshit is designed to impress without direct concern for the truth.
Public service human resources sections, with their change management schemes, right-sizing programs and leadership training courses, know all about this. Indeed the very name – remember when we had a simple pay office – is evidence of their bullshit-generating capacity.
A textbook I have tells me: "The concept of leadership is a fundamental component of the way in which behaviour in organisations has been analysed."
If that isn't profound bullshit I don't know what is.
Professor Jenny Stewart, in her brilliant 2004 book The Decline of the Tea Lady, drew attention to much of this nonsense which she called "the world of blah".
Visions, she pointed out, used to be religious apparitions. But people applying for a job in the Department of Routine Service would be asked to outline their "vision for the department".
One of the truly great "blah" words she identifies is "strategic", which means everything and nothing. Under its mesmeric power, organisations devote themselves to the strategic management of everything until it becomes clear that strategy is a way of denying reality rather than engaging with it.
As a general rule, any entity with the word "strategic" in its title is almost certainly a bullshit-generator.
Economists are fine practitioners of the art of profound bullshit. Whole textbooks are filled with little else.
But the authors of the paper on detecting pseudo-profound bullshit, Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Nathaniel Barr, Derek Koehler and Jonathan A. Fugelsang, are not just concerned with the goals and intentions of the bullshitter.They're also interested in "the factors that predispose one to become or to resist becoming a bullshittee".
The bullshittee is insufficiently researched. For example, we know next to nothing about the 77 people who gave their first-preference vote to Malcolm Roberts and helped him get elected as a senator for Pauline Hanson's One Nation party.
Do they accept his bullshit that there is no empirical evidence to show that burning fossil fuels causes climate change?
Do they believe his conspiracy theory that NASA, the United Nations and all bureaux of meteorology around the world are engaged in a giant climate change conspiracy?
(People who believe in such conspiracies have clearly never tried to get a bunch of disparate organisations and individuals to agree on anything.)
Roberts' bullshit is not profound, but requires real gall.
And what of all the anti-vaccers? Why do they accept bullshit and risk the lives of their children? Why are they blind to the impact of measles, mumps and rubella?
Bullshittees are not prejudiced. Indeed, the Ig Noble-winning authors say that some individuals may have an excessively "open" mind that biases them to make inflated judgments of profundity, regardless of the content.
The authors remind us that it pays to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out.
Sadly some may have an inability to detect bullshit, which may cause them to confuse vagueness for profundity. The authors say that all too often readers judge as profound what they have failed to grasp.
This phenomenon was apparent in the lead-up to the global financial crisis.
"Sophisticated" bankers were happy to buy and sell derivatives and credit rating agencies were perfectly happy to give them AAA ratings when they had no idea what these securities actually were.
Does it matter if the bullshitter is known to be untrustworthy?
Not if Donald Trump's success in the US Republican presidential preselection is any measure. You can make contradictory statements and run failed businesses and still command a large number of believers.
The methodology of the paper on pseudo-profound bullshit is interesting. Ten novel meaningless statements were derived from two websites and used to create a Bullshit Receptivity Scale (BSR).
Meaningless statements with appropriate syntax were mashed together to give statements like: "Imagination is inside exponential space time events" or "We are in the midst of a self-aware blossoming of being that will align us with the nexus itself".
Students were asked to rank the statements on a one-to-five scale, running from not at all profound to very profound.
I won't go into all the statistical methodology, but the conclusion is that participants largely failed to detect statements that were bullshit.
The authors also inserted questions such as: "I have been to every country in the world" to check that participants were not simply randomly filling in the survey. All participants who selected any option but "strongly disagree" with this statement were removed from the survey.
The authors argue that a generally charitable attitude towards ambiguity and the succinctness and speed of new media like Twitter may be conducive to the promulgation of bullshit.
Those more receptive to bullshit are less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e. verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to conspiracy theories, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine.
It's no surprise to find out that bullshit receptivity is positively correlated with both religious and paranormal beliefs and a tendency to endorse complementary medicines.
But further research is required to find out why major institutions such as the public service are inclined to generate profound bullshit.
There must surely be a three-day conference the Australian Public Service Commission could organise in Canberra to consider this.