COMMENTS BY REVIEWER AI have studied this manuscript very carefully withlemon juice and X-rays and have not detected a singleflaw in either design or writing style. I suggest it bepublished without revision. Clearly it is the mostconcise manuscript I have ever seen-yet it containssufficient detail to allow other investigators to repli-cate Dr. Upper's failure. In comparison with theother manuscripts I get from you containing all thatcomplicated detail, this one was a pleasure to examine.Surely we can find a place for this paper in theJournal-perhaps on the edge of a blank page.

ing may get your pronouns wrong. If this happens, you can tell Bing your correct pronouns using @Bing in the message.

Bing may get your pronouns wrong. If this happens, you can tell Bing your correct pronouns using @Bing in the message.

Musical Chairs

In 1964, after earning four O-levels, including one in art and maths, Eno had developed an interest in art and music and had no interest in a "conventional job".[12]

“To be scientifically literate is to empower yourself to know when someone else is full of shit.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

Think about the sad essay we all used to write for your (insert language here) class: back then you didn’t have permission to generate original ideas.

easily exploited by a bullshitter. To counter this,organizations should only establish committees andhave meetings when there are clear terms ofreference, a value-adding agenda, and the rightattendees who can contribute to the desiredagenda. More simply, the need for a meeting shouldbe questioned unless an important decision needs tobe made.

When bullshit is legitimized and codified, itspreads more easily and is likely to be moreinfluential. This in turn fosters the future produc-tion of more bullshit.

Furthermore, to help encourage and value evi-dence over opinion, managers should be carefulwhom they consult. While they should seek sub-stantive debate about statements and supportingevidence, they should only involve well-informedand value-adding experts. Social media andcrowdsourcing initiatives regularly remind us thatthe wisdom of the crowd is not as judicious as wethink.

Colleagues throughout the organization, andespecially those in administrative and leadershiproles, should also practice it so that evidence canguide key decisions. This is also true in the areas ofmarketing and sales, which thrive on the creationand circulation of bullshit.

Research byPennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler,and Fugelsang (2015)suggests that an organiza-tion’s capacity to produce and accept workplacebullshit decreases with the prevalence of andvalue placed on critical thinking in that organiza-tion. They outline how individuals have differentsensitivities to bullshit: Those who have the abilityto stop and think analytically about the substanceof statements are less receptive to bullshit, whilethose with lower cognitive skills and less insightare more receptive.

What people think and state depends on how theythink. Thus, it is far more dangerous to assumepeople know what they are talking about than it isto assume they do not

The first three steps in the C.R.A.P. framework areused to understand the nature of workplace bullshitand how to identify and deal with it. Building on thisknowledge, the final step in the framework outlineshow to prevent the creation and spread of work-place bullshit in the first place. In the long term,this step may be of the greatest benefit in dealingwith workplace bullshit. Effective prevention willminimize the need for, and costs associated with,recognizing and acting against workplace bullshit.

oicing can alsoentail publicly calling ‘bullshit on bullshit’ orseeking help from an outside agency, such as aunion or government office. Employees are morelikely to choose to voice when they perceive thatthe organization offers sufficient psychologicalsafety; that is, when employees sense that theywill not be embarrassed or punished if they speakup (Frazier, Fainshmidt, Klinger, Pezeshkan, &Vracheva, 2017). The propensity to voice also de-pends on the extent to which employees haveorganizational commitment; that is, whether theycare for and believe in the organization enough towant to counter the harm of bullshit, combinedwith their perceived ability and capacity to make adifference. Such conditions are necessary foreffectively confronting bullshit. A principle knownas Brandolini’s Law states that the amount of en-ergy needed to refute bullshit is an order ofmagnitude larger than is needed to produce it(“Brandolini’s Law,” 2014).

Voicing is the act of employees speaking up toconfront what they consider to be bullshit. Em-ployees may ask to see evidence that supports thesuspected bullshit. They may themselves providebullshit-challenging evidence along with alterna-tive statements, and when doing so should becognizant that simple and coherent bullshit willtend to be more appealing than intricate andcomplex truths. Employees may also voice bylaughing at and mocking bullshit. This is a way to“informally show up its emptiness without havingto risk a full-frontal face-off with powerful bullshitartists” (Spicer, 2017, p. 167).

When employees correctly conclude that a state-ment is bullshit, they may react in a number ofdifferent ways. To illustrate these reactions, wedraw onHirschman’s (1970)exit,voice,loyaltyframework, which he initially formulated to illus-trate how employees react to organizations indecline or when the sky was falling. Scholars lateraddedneglect(Farrell, 1983; Withey & Cooper,1989) and successfully applied the framework tohelp understand employees’ responses to negativeworkplace experiences (Rusbult, Farrell, Rogers, &Mainous, 1988; Turnley & Feldman, 1999). Weapply this framework here to employees’ reactionsto bullshit.When employees act by exiting, they are tryingto escape from the bullshit and the bullshitter.This can involve quitting the organization orseeking a transfer to a different unit of the orga-nization so as to avoid the influence of the bull-shitter. Exiting is a likely reaction when employeesare so appalled by the bullshit that they cannotstay with the organization or unit, or when theyare already disillusioned, and the bullshit (possiblythe latest bout in a stream of bullshit) is the laststraw. For exiting to happen, employee dissatis-faction with the situation must rise to such a levelthat the disadvantages of remaining and facingbullshit in the workplace are greater than thedisadvantages of leaving. Or alternatively, thepersonal costs of leaving should be low enoughrelative to the costs of the two other responses inwhich workers remain and either contest thebullshit (i.e., voice) or disengage from the work-place bullshit (i.e., neglect).

In the words of U.S. law-yer and presidential adviser Ted Sorensen, it islikely produced unknowingly, as many employeesdevelop “a confidence in [their] own competencewhich outruns the fact” (Sorensen, 1963, p. 72).

When faced with ‘jargonese,’ often people assumethat they are missing something, or they confusevagueness for profundity. The rule holds however,that if it is not possible to understand what thewords in a statement mean, then it is reasonableto suspect the statement to be bullshit.

The cornerstone to recognising bullshit isknowing how it masquerades. This involves recog-nizing how colleagues go about framing statements(in written, spoken, or graphical form) that arewithout regard for the truth. Typically, suchstatements are abstract and general in nature andcome across as the opposite of plain English. Thestatements will lack details, sources, and logic,and they will be full of logical disconnects andgaps. Furthermore, if a statement is riddled withmeaningless language, acronyms, buzzwords, andjargon, then it is likely to be bullshit.

some bullshittersbullshit because they are naı ̈ve, biased, or sloppyin their handling of statements. They do notrealize they are crafting or spreading bullshit.There is a primary need therefore to be alert tothe possibility of bullshit. While accepting itsubiquity, one must avoid becoming so accustomedto bullshit as to be indifferent to its presence. Inother words, it is necessary to develop a healthycynicism about the possibility of bullshit.

Third, the audience is more likely to find thebullshit appealing if they also find it credible. Akey to credibility is the identity of the personcommunicating the bullshit.

Remember that bullshitters, unre-stricted by truth, have more freedom to frametheir statements. They are at liberty to deviseappealing bullshit with three significant charac-teristics. First, the bullshit may offer personalbenefits to the audience. For example, if a scien-tist in a research and development (R&D) depart-ment hears some bullshit from their boss thatsuggests the company is about to double the R&Dbudget, the scientist is likely to find this bullshitappealing. In addition, some employees may alsorelish or need workplace bullshit so as to flourish intheir jobs. They view bullshit as a necessary aspectof organizational life. Trendy jargon, flaky logic,and shallow arguments can be so appealing tosome that they provide them with direction andenergy.

Furthermore, abullshitter’s statements may never have beenintended to be believed or even to garner muchattention. They are intended to misrepresent bybeing appealing or convincing, or by distracting,exhausting, or disengaging colleagues, so thatagendas can be pursued with little or no resis-tance. This lack of awareness of the true nature ofworkplace bullshit is one of the reasons why thereis such an abundance of it (Fredal, 2011).

consider when a manager tells em-ployees that they must do a task in a certain waybecause it is so specified in the union’s collectiveagreement, but the manager has no idea whetherthis specification in the collective agreementactually exists or not. In this case, the manager isconsciously bullshitting. They are not lying,because they do not know whether the task isactually specified in the collective agreement.

The bullshitter makes adecision to further that agenda through commu-nicative acts and decides on a message and amedium that will help them to achieve thatagenda. Crucially, while doing so, they disregardthe truth, in the sense that they are not concernedwith the truth, inaccuracy, or falseness of theirmessage but only in its efficaciousness in promot-ing the desired agenda

when we engagein work, we must distinguish between this type ofsocial bullshit, which can be harmless or evenhelpful to the organization (because it can enablethe development of normal interpersonal re-lationships), and other types of bullshit that canhave damaging impacts on the organization.

the more often colleagues at work are asked tocomment on matters about which they know littleor nothing, the more bullshit there is

Marketing bullshit(a.k.a. puffery)Exaggerated or false claims by marketersthat amplify the features and performanceof a product or service (Chakraborty &Harbaugh, 2014).In 2000, a court ruled that ads from the PapaJohn’s pizza company stating “Betteringredients. Better Pizza” could not beverified as fact and should be deemedpuffery

Jargon bullshit Words or expressions used by a particularprofession or group to make something seemlegitimate and enticing, while also muddlinglanguage and thinking (Poole, 2013; Spicer,2017).

AbstractMany organizations are drowning in a flood of corporate bullshit, andthis is particularly true of organizations in trouble, whose managers tend to makeup stuff on the fly and with little regard for future consequences. Bullshittingand lying are not synonymous. While the liar knows the truth and wittingly bendsit to suit their purpose, the bullshitter simply does not care about the truth. Man-agers can actually do something about organizational bullshit, and this ExecutiveDigest provides a sequential framework that enables them to do so. They cancomprehend it, they can recognize it for what it is, they can act against it, and theycan take steps to prevent it from happening in the future. While it is unlikely thatany organization will ever be able to rid itself of bullshit entirely, this article arguesthat by taking these steps, astute managers can work toward stemming its flood

We assume that the people who are in the bestposition to accurately assess the degree of bullshit in their organizations arethe people who work there; therefore, we set out to develop a reliable andvalid scale to measure employees’ perceptions of the extent to which bullshitexists in their organizations. Next, we turn to how we developed theOrganizational Bullshit Perception Scale (OBPS).

Applying the logic of Petrocelli (2018), leaders will be driven to bull-shit when the social and professional expectations to have an opinion are high,and when they expect to get away with it. These two conditions are subject tohow (un)knowledgeable their audience is. Similarly, if leaders exhibit high levelsof overconfidence, and believe they are popular amongst their peers, this willmake them likely to engage in more bullshit-related behavior (Jerrim et al.,2019).

McCarthy et al. (2020) refer to a number of bullshit expressionssuch as “blue-sky thinking” or “out-of-the-box thinking”, which are often usedas vague buzzwords with minimal substance. This vagueness serves the interestsof bullshitters, because communication targets are less likely to ask questionswhen they find it difficult to understand what has been said (McCarthy et al.,2020).

ll respondents assessed their overallperceived bullshit in their organization on a simple 4-point scale ranging from 1indicating ‘there is no bullshit in our organization’, through 2 indicating ‘there isa little bullshit in our organization’, through 3 indicating ‘there is some bullshitin our organization’ to 4 indicating ‘there is a lot of bullshit in our organization’.The overall perceived bullshit in the organization was regressed on the threeperceived bullshit scale factors. The R2value of 0.36 indicates convergencebetween the OBPS and the overall bullshit perception measure, withregardfor truthandthe bossbeing significant predictors of the overall bullshitperception.

The second dimension,the boss, confirms that employees believe that theirsuperiors are key players in the dissemination of bullshit. Bullshit aims only toserve an immediate end – whether to puff up one’s reputation or to advancetheir point of view or argument (Gibson, 2011). Further, employees are likely tohave to take action based on any bullshit communicated by their bosses. As aresult, employees are likely to be acutely aware when their superiors use bullshitto advance their own self-interests.

The final dimension,bullshit language,considers some of the commonly usedtypes of language employed by bullshitters, namely the excessive use of acro-nyms and jargon. The finding that employees perceive that the excessive use ofsuch language is a form of bullshit confirms that they are not oblivious to its usein the workplace. They may share the opinion of McCarthy et al. (2020, p. 258),who argued that “if a statement is riddled with meaningless language, acronyms,buzzwords, and jargon, then it is likely to be bullshit.” It is possible that theexcessive use of acronyms and jargon may occur to employees as an exclusion-ary mechanism in the workplace, whereby those unfamiliar with the terminologymay not be able to meaningfully contribute to the conversation or voice theirconcerns.

a system of explicit group privilege that, in the name of “social justice,” demands equal results and explicitly sorts citizens into “protected classes” based on race and other demographic categories.

Those forms of preferential treatment built up in our system over time, first in administrative rulings, then executive orders, later in congressionally passed law, and finally were sanctified by the Supreme Court

Among the distortions was the abandonment of nondiscrimination and equal opportunity in favor of “group rights” not unlike those advanced by Calhoun and his followers.

composed of people from different races, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions

Yet the damage done by the denial of core American principles and by the attempted substitution of a theory of group rights in their place proved widespread and long-lasting. These, indeed, are the direct ancestors of some of the destructive theories that today divide our people and tear at the fabric of our country.

that first began in the United States

at which time Congress immediately outlawed the slave trade

Many Americans labor under the illusion that slavery was somehow a uniquely American evil.

Thomas Jefferson also held slaves

The three-fifths compromise was proposed by an antislavery delegate to prevent the South from counting their slaves as whole persons for purposes of increasing their congressional representation.

If you do the math

four

Most people are rather confident oftheir ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So thephenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted muchsustained inquir

t"'~,

Why bullshit is no laughing matter

Some players may even assume that they are Chell - akin to Heidegger’s notion of a tool being ready to hand rather than present at hand

But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones. These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”

de nouvelles recherches suggèrent que la psilocybine pourrait favoriser la croissance de nouvelles cellules du cerveau.