Low tolerance for bullshit

I enjoy the honest narrative shared by Simon Raper, a frequent contributor to the Significance magazine published by the Royal Statistical Society. He routinely delivers a refreshing dose of reality and honesty — inviting thoughts and discussion beyond the seemingly cut and dry world of data analysis.

His most recent contribution — “Bullshit jobs in statistics” did not disappoint and hit a sensitive nerve with me, though not in a bad way. It’s a nerve that should be poked and one I’m still figuring out how to hit in others without causing understandable feelings of depression or serious defensiveness. Raper managed to make some brutal points with a fair tone — by tying them to words described by anthropologist David Graeber’s recent work (I haven’t yet read his 2018 book Bullshit Jobs: A Theory published by Penguin in London).

A little over a year ago, I was deep into trying to understand and accept my career crisis (which just happened to correspond with mid-life). The crisis had been bubbling under the service for a decade, maybe longer. I came to realize that the very things that sent me toward Statistics were essentially those pushing me away. In beautiful retrospect, I never had a chance of it being a fulfilling career for me, though I fought hard to get there. I was caught in the vicious cycle of telling myself I had dedicated too much of my life to the path I was on to change directions — 6 years of graduate school in Statistics and a years as a professor of Statistics! So, I kept putting in more time, which then made it even harder to consider change.

That day, I sat in the waiting room waiting to see the therapist I had finally hired to help me make sense of the deep, sickening feeling I now almost always carried around with me. I glanced through my notebook, still proud of what I had written down the night before. I desperately needed simple words to describe reasons for the work-related feelings I was in constant struggle with, and I felt like maybe I had found them. I had watched a webinar sponsored by the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD) by Cristi Cook on her Pillars of Genius concept. I spent an hour trying to articulate four pillars of genius for myself. “Low tolerance for bullshit” was the second thing I wrote down, right after “Not patient.” A little note scribbled on the opposite side of the page says “I chose this career to help avoid BS and lack of integrity in research, but instead that just led me here.” I knew I loved science. I knew I loved research. But, I loathed most of my work and interactions as statistician.

Just writing down the words “Low tolerance for bullshit” made a huge difference for me. It explained so much about my life and decisions I had made. I then spent 20 minutes searching for synonyms for the word “bullshit” so I could display it as a reminder for myself — but in a way my kids wouldn’t giggle over and feel that they shouldn’t say. “Crap” was the obvious option, but didn’t sit right either. I had already written an article with “s-word” in the title and hadn’t planned on it becoming a general life theme. Turns out not to be an easy exercise and one I’m sure many before me have tried — the BS acronym seems to be the best option. But, the process of looking was also therapeutic — definitions popped up including words and phrases like “exaggerated talk”, “foolish talk”, “unjustified talk”, “false importance,” “illogical”, “doing things for the wrong reasons, “deceitful talk”, “pretentious talk”, “nonsense” and my favorite “eloquent and insincere rhetoric.” I was certainly in the right place. [Note: on a last read through before publishing this, I found the word “pooped” instead of “popped” in the previous sentence…hmm…definitely explainable.]

Unraveling the ways the theme ran through the experiences in my career as a statistician, and even my decision to become a statistician in the first place, was complicated. I tried to accept “Low tolerance for bullshit” as one of my core “pillars of genius” and make decisions that were consistent with it. It wasn’t something I wanted to get rid of — but it was something that would be hard to live with given my daily work experiences. It still amazes me how naming something we already know and feel on a daily basis can give us new perspectives on life and change our actions and ways of thinking. But there it was.

Finally, back to Simon Raper’s article – you can now imagine my response to seeing the title of it! I enjoyed and agreed with the whole thing, but my favorite part was actually the last section All too human where he relates the ideas back to our human faults. It’s a common theme in his writings and one that I now see running clearly through my posts. I end here with a couple of quotes from that section of his article:

Not only are we ourselves the victims of bullshit jobs, but when we fail to push back against the incorrect use of statistics we add another shovel-load of dung to the heap.

Simon Raper, “Bullshit Jobs in Statistics”, Significance, October 2019, 16(5).

We also need to give the messily human, anthropological side of statistics as much attention in our journals and conferences as the tidy, safe, non-human mathematical side. After all, the elegance and sophistication of a new statistical technique are worth nothing if its main use is for conning business executives.

Simon Raper, “Bullshit Jobs in Statistics”, Significance, October 2019, 16(5).

Here’s to fighting against bullshit jobs in Statistics, and to any efforts to scrub away the bullshit often covering the use of Statistics in practice.