My latest article breaks down the science behind how people get you to say "yes" and why learning this won't save you. I'd ask you to read it, but I'm going to start small and just ask you to click the link. (That's the foot-in-the-door technique. You're welcome.) open.substack.com/pub/bullshit...

How come we sometimes say ‘yes’ to salespeople, bosses and colleagues, and even friends, when we know we shouldn’t have? @metacognishane.bsky.social, for once, not writing (about) bullshit, but about the science of ‘yes’: buff.ly/2AXfyAr

My latest article breaks down the science behind how people get you to say "yes" and why learning this won't save you. I'd ask you to read it, but I'm going to start small and just ask you to click the link. (That's the foot-in-the-door technique. You're welcome.) open.substack.com/pub/bullshit...

One of my favorites paper got published 🤓 It covers a lot of ground and it’s the best summary of my views on misinformation and what to do about it. Give it a read :) 🔓 osf.io/preprints/ps... 👉 doi.org/10.1177/1461...

I was on @npr.org's "All Things Considered" today talking about my latest research. Given how much I hate the actual sound of my own voice, I thought it would be fun to inflict that displeasure on all of you, too. www.npr.org/2026/04/01/n...

I was on @npr.org's "All Things Considered" today talking about my latest research. Given how much I hate the actual sound of my own voice, I thought it would be fun to inflict that displeasure on all of you, too. www.npr.org/2026/04/01/n...

If I've learned anything this week, it's that everyone on LinkedIn totally HATES corporate bullshit, you guys, and they've all been heroically calling it out for years wherever they see it. NONE of them have ever fallen for it and NONE of them ever use it either!

Kennedy’s Vaccine Agenda Hits Roadblocks, Diminishing His Clout Surgeon General nominee is stalled. CDC is officially leaderless. A judge says Kennedy overstepped his bounds. My latest in @nytimes.com on RFK’s no good terrible horrible very bad month. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/u...

"Corporate settings are saturated with authority cues like titles, power hierarchies, [and] 'leadership vision,'” Littrell told Investopedia via email, "which makes impressive-sounding ('bullshitty') ambiguity especially easy to pass off as insight." www.investopedia.com/a-cornell-re...

New study finds that employees impressed by corporate speak may be least equipped to make effective decisions

“This isn’t something that only affects people who are less intelligent. Anybody can fall for bullshit when it is packaged up to appeal to our biases.” Nice interview and article about my corporate bullshit paper in The Guardian today: www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Corporate bullshit – "let's optimize & leverage that synergizing pivot!" – sooooo grating! Study: Workers who fall for ‘corporate bullshit’ worse at jobs www.theguardian.com/business/202... Workers "impressed by corporate speak may be the least equipped to make effective" business decisions.

New Substack post is up! bit.ly/3NAO61k This one covers my new paper on measuring "Corporate BS Receptivity" (CBSR), including what BS actually is, how it spreads in the workplace, and what we can do about it. 🐂 💩

“This isn’t something that only affects people who are less intelligent. Anybody can fall for bullshit when it is packaged up to appeal to our biases.” Nice interview and article about my corporate bullshit paper in The Guardian today: www.theguardian.com/business/202...

More than half of TikTok ADHD content is misinformation, new research finds www.the-independent.com/tech/tiktok-... "...52% of #ADHD -related videos and 41% of autism videos analysed on TikTok were inaccurate..."

Mental health misinformation widespread on social media, study ca.news.yahoo.com/tiktok-leads... Up to 56% of "posts about autism, ADHD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, eating disorders, OCD, anxiety, & phobias were found to be often inaccurate or unsubstantiated."

New study finds link between receptivity to “corporate bullshit” and weaker leadership skills

What better to introduce an article on Corporate Bullshit and how to measure receptivity to it? Indeed—a *bullshit* title. Bullshitmeister @metacognishane knows his onions, for sure: buff.ly/qPqFUws

“The bottom line is that almost anyone can fall for bullshit when it’s packaged to appeal to their specific expertise, interests, or biases.”

Working hypothesis: If you're doing research and don't occasionally have a small existential crisis, either you've been blessed to work in an exceptional field (do tell which one it is!), or maybe you're being a bit naive.

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with (corporate) bullshit." www.inc.com/jessica-stil...

Many supporters of science note the latest attack on US research as "senseless" or "no good reason" as if it is just an irrational attack on things (science & medicine) that all recognize are both good and outside of politics. Better if we acknowledged that there are clear goals to this attack. 1/4

New Substack post is up! bit.ly/3NAO61k This one covers my new paper on measuring "Corporate BS Receptivity" (CBSR), including what BS actually is, how it spreads in the workplace, and what we can do about it. 🐂 💩

Apparently, I broke ResearchGate with a single paper. 😬

“I was really shocked that an article published in a Springer journal and which presumably had gone through a peer or editorial review could have such a high number of references to hallucinated articles. I can see how one or two may slip through the net, but this was a preposterous number.”

P.S. Pre-post differences are *not* valid treatment effect estimates. Why? Here's a post by @statsepi.bsky.social: statsepi.substack.com/p/one-simple..., here's a post by me: www.the100.ci/2025/01/22/r... >

Employees who are impressed by vague corporate-speak like “synergistic leadership,” or “growth-hacking paradigms” struggle with decision-making. The Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale measures susceptibility to impressive-but-empty organizational rhetoric. news.cornell.edu/stories/2026...

Some nice coverage of my latest paper in today's Cornell Chronicle: "Essentially, the employees most excited and inspired by “visionary” corporate jargon may be the least equipped to make effective, practical business decisions for their companies." news.cornell.edu/stories/2026...

Footnotes from the Margins I love footnotes, so I'll occasionally share my favs. @metacognishane.bsky.social, in his post about the story of what bullshit actually means, points out something this poster has never ever done, nuh uh, nope never... 😅😬 bullshitology.substack.com/p/bullshit-w...

We recently submitted a commentary on a very influential meta-analysis. We found that: 1) 40% of relevant literature had not been identified because of lazy search, 2) a few large N included studies did not meet stated inclusion criteria, and 3) that almost all sig. moderator findings were wrong.

198 effect sizes in ego depletion resesrch showed an effect size of d=0.62. Preregistered large replications (including some by original authors) yielded an effect size of 0. No one has been able to offer any other explanation for this huge research waste than massive p-hacking.

Research by @metacognisgane.bsky.social has spawned the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale, significantly associated with measures of analytic thinking, organizational culture and job performance, and a robust predictor of work-related decision-making: buff.ly/UHWSojf TL;DR:🧵 buff.ly/2BwSUQ9

"The current paper argues for a more explicitly interactive, co-adaptive account for trends in communications technology and politics." 👏 academic.oup.com/joc/advance-...

Exactly how I felt last time I was in TN and saw that Publix is selling Blue Bell for nearly $10 per tub now. www.youtube.com/shorts/wMgNz...

What the weather in NY has been like the past two weeks:

🧵Happy to announce, "The Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale: Development, validation, and associations with workplace outcomes" is now published! 😀🥳 (see replies below for more info) Official version: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Open-access version: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Exactly how I felt last time I was in TN and saw that Publix is selling Blue Bell for nearly $10 per tub now. www.youtube.com/shorts/wMgNz...

Quelle surprise. Ya know, I used to feel a (very) small twinge of empathy for the dude every time I used him & his nonsense as examples of bullshit/bullshitting in my papers and talks. Not any more! Maybe instead of examples of bullshitting, I'll use him as an example of "Creepshitting."

I reviewed an earlier version of this paper. I think it's interesting, because you can tell by reading it that evolutionary psychology still lacks a loyal opposition and a healthy error culture. It's a defensive paper, targeted at people who believe evolution stops at the neck, YouTubers, _others_

New Bullshitology post is up! bit.ly/4k942E7 This week, I talk about famous figures from psychology's past whose major contributions were later discovered to be fishy, if not fraudulent. Check it out when you get time!

Took a road trip a couple of weeks ago and was able to visit my parents for a few days. Was digging around in some boxes of stuff in my old room and found a treasure trove of old “elementary school book fair” gold:

What have Oliver Sacks, Stanley Milgram, David Rosenhan, and Philip Zimbardo in common? They lied and bullshitted themselves to fame, while being candid about their personal lives, as @metacognishane.bsky.social explains: buff.ly/Pg0tR0B

New Bullshitology post is up! bit.ly/4k942E7 This week, I talk about famous figures from psychology's past whose major contributions were later discovered to be fishy, if not fraudulent. Check it out when you get time!

US science after a year of Trump "More than 7,800 research grants terminated or frozen. Some 25,000 scientists and personnel gone from agencies that oversee research." via @nature.com Dark Age 2.0

(1/3) New paper out in the Journal of Cognitive Psychology: Conflict Detection across Various Probabilistic Reasoning Tasks. The article: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/TXJ4F... Open-access version: www.wdeneys.org/data/Haen_et... With Eva Janssen, Peter Verkoeijen, Wim de Neys & Tamara van Gog.

Meta-analysis: After correcting for publication bias, there is no effect of “social norm messaging” nudges on health behavior We need theories that explain *why* these interventions don’t work www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"The world’s largest accounting body has decided to scrap remote exams to combat a rise in students cheating when sitting tests remotely." www.ft.com/content/52e7...

"Creed and Christmas music" is the new "peanut butter and chocolate." www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpkr...

I don't think I've said this enough, but it bears repeating: OSF's new UI design is terrible. Thinking about switching to ResearchBox for future projects. Have any of you used it yet?: datacolada.org/130?trk=feed...

In the "Bullshitters Guide to the Galaxy," the answer to everything is 92, not 42.