Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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86 of 103 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Good-Humored Skeptic's Feast for the Mind!, March 3, 2004
Master stage magicians Penn and Teller take on psychics, astrology, the environment, and a host of other questionable topics. Like the title of the show, Penn and Teller do not hesitate at all in demonstrating that the frauds, con men, and phony scientists are full of Bull Sh*t! Happily, they manage to do it with a unique style and humor that left me snorting Dr. Pepper through my nostrils. Ouch. It was worth it! In the process of watching these programs, you will learn exactly -how- frauds and fakers pull of many of their stunts, -why- certain pseudoscientists and pseudo historians are wrong, and even -why- people are often so eager to believe and accept things at face value. While our prestidigitationator hosts are opinionated, they are always on the side of the common man (us) who so often plays the dupe to the frauds of our day. These programs are entertainment and education rolled into one. I am not the sort of person who usually buys dvds of every series I like. This series was warrented though, and long overdue...Penn and Teller have proven themselves worthy of a place on any skeptic's shelf. Enjoy!
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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A show every "new age" person should see., January 11, 2005
I have mixed feelings about this series. I really like what Penn and Teller are trying to do with this show, and I tend agree with them more than I disagree. When someone is arguing a point that I agree with, I have a tendency to be even more critical of their arguments; so, I am very critical of any weak arguments that they may make. Regardless, we are in dire need of more skeptics in this society, so I am glad that this show exists.
Michael Shermer stated in his book, "Why People Believe Weird Things", two fallacies of being a skeptic. One is that when a skeptic disagrees with absolutely everything at face value, their arguments become less valuable. The other is that skeptics are often so used to arguing against others, that they forget to closely analyze their own stance; thereby not accepting the skeptics of their skepticism. This could lead to the false belief that any form of disagreement is correct, which Penn and Teller are occasionally guilty of in this series. This is the mistake of using skepticism as a dogma rather than as a scientific method.
Episode one is a great starter to the series. It exposes mediums as frauds who use techniques, much like psychics do, to hot and cold read people. The second episode on alternative medicine is one of my favorites. They informatively use science and logic to debunk reflexology, magnet therapy, and chiropractors. The Alien abduction episode was a little sad, because a lot of people who believed in it seemed lost, or searching for something more. It was really sad to see how they were exploited by people trying to milk dollars out of them.
The second hand smoke episode was interesting. The episode was not so much about debunking the idea that second hand smoke is harmful. Rather, it was about exposing the fanaticism in the anti-smoking movement, and forces non-smokers to think about the implications their movement has on civil liberties. P&T lost me a little here, using a radio DJ as an expert, whereas in previous episodes they had used doctors, academics, as well as reputable psychologists and scientists. Also, they start to expose their bias. P&T are admitted Libertarians, and use data from the Cato institute, a free market biased libertarian think tank. That's not to imply that the data gathered by Cato is wrong, but I hope anyone watching this show considers all of the sources, especially when political issues are involved. Though they show that there is not current data to support the theory that second hand smoke is harmful, they don't really discuss that proper studies have not been done to prove it safe, either. As a scientist who studies public health and statistics (there's my bias), I can tell you that such a study would be extremely complicated and expensive to design. Still, from a civil liberties point of view, it is a very interesting episode to watch.
The "Sex" episode exposes the lengths (no pun intended) people go to in order to improve their self esteem. As with many of these episodes, it is sad to see how people get duped out of their money. The "Feng Shui", "Self-Help", "ESP", "Ouija Board", and diet episodes were much the same. The portion of the Feng Shui episode focusing on bottled water being very informative, and P&T give a link to the NRDC paper on their web site, which everyone should read. The diet episode is very interesting, but I think they only presented half of the "genetic" foods issue. It can be very beneficial to produce more abundant crops for third world countries. Though, I wish they had addressed the issue that some corporation have been accused of engineering seeds that are only viable for one generation, making farmers dependent on the seed companies.
The final episode, on environmentalism, was the most frustrating. Their main source against the argument of global warming is author Bjorn Lomborg, who many scientists have accused of extrapolating his conclusions from cherry picked data. Any statistician who is aware of environmental issues would know that Lomborg's data does very little to prove that global warming is wrong. Many Nobel laureates have signed an anti-global warming statement, and it is a shame that none of them could be interviewed to defend global warming. The argument they make that "there would not be any trees, were it not be for the paper industry" was flat out ridiculous. Unfortunately, the environmental activists deserve the treatment that they got in this episode. As I said, I am even more critical of people arguing for my own side, because I don't want my side to sound ignorant. In this episode, ill informed activists who have no idea what they are talking about are the best the environmentalists could produce to represent their side. The kind of people in college who would have drum circles and protests, without ever taking a biology or chemistry class to really understand the implications of what they are fighting about. Doing research after this show, many of the pro-environment academics have said that their interviews were dramatically edited. So, once again, a person needs to remember that this is a T.V. show that is trying to prove a point, and the creators will rarely want to look incorrect.
In the introduction to his book, Michael Shermer stated that people often ask him why they should believe him. He replied, as all skeptics should, "They shouldn't." The controversial political analyst Noam Chomsky advises his readers to never believe anything he talks about without researching it for themselves. That advice should also be taken when watching P&T's show. Just because they are funny, charismatic, and sure of themselves does not mean that they are correct. To their credit, Penn and Teller post many of their sources and links for each episode on their web site. All in all, I think this is a series that everyone should watch. Especially if they watch it critically, and can remove themselves from the passionate arguments that Penn makes.
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317 of 423 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Skeptical about the skeptics, July 25, 2004
Penn and Teller's Bullshi*t is a much-needed voice of reason in the midst of the alarmist, emotionally charged know-nothings they spend their time debunking in this DVD series. What's included here is a 3-disc set that contains the entire first season (10 episodes) as well as some bonus features, most notably a bonus episode (about ghosts).
Initially, I caught Bullshi*t on Showtime and fell instantly in love with it. At last, here was a series dedicated to crushing the myths that draw in millions of non-thinking individuals. There was something almost vindicating about seeing them body-slam sensationalist after sensationalist with their rhetoric, even providing thinking America with some ammunition to battle our more, well...emotion-driven friends. I had only seen three or four installments on Showtime before buying the DVD and eagerly gobbling up all ten episodes.
Now that I've had some time with the series and have seen all the shows multiple times, something interesting has happened. The last episode I watched really got to me - an episode on second-hand smoke. For once, I thoroughly disagreed with Penn and Teller. The idiots that I normally found myself scoffing at - well, this time it was the hosts of the show. What I saw in that episode was Penn and Teller from the other side of the river. I saw them taking a very specific facet of an argument, thus pushing reams of data aside, and exploit it using arguments from the constitution applied to illogical extremes. Right away it started on a very shaky foot when they staged a scene of themselves in a restaurant with a noisy musician nearby, annoying them. "You're annoying us - let's legislate against you," they began, implying that second-hand smoke was on the same level of loud music, nothing more than an annoyance.
The most important thing to note about this argument is that there *is* legislation against loud music. It's called disturbing the peace. So apparently "annoying" habits are regularly legislated against, including the one they were trying to portray as absurd as an analogy.
Their main thread in this argument was that since there was no direct data that linked second-hand smoke to illness, second-hand smoke is therefore okay to have around. Their sub-point is that the EPA exaggerated some data in a report they issued in the 90s, and this exaggeration has been used to fuel the legislation against smoking in public. Therefore, they seem to imply that because of the bogus data, the legislation against second-hand smoke is also bogus.
To me, neither of these arguments hold any water. There is a very simple point to be made regarding second-hand smoke - we know smoking causes death and illness. The same chemicals that cause these illnesses are present in second-hand smoke. Therefore, whether or not we can prove that occasional second-hand smoke causes cancer, we do know that it contains very harmful compounds. The only difference between a non-smoker and smoker, then, is the amount of this smoke they are inhaling. Just because it's not proven that a smaller amount of smoke will cause me to die doesn't mean it's perfectly okay for it to be floating around in the air for me to breathe. If I sprayed arsenic and carbon monoxide into someone's face, they would arrest me. If I blow it into someone's face after inhaling it from a cigarette, it's legal in most areas. This is completely illogical to me. Speaking to their second point, just because the data may have been exaggerated, it doesn't mean that it's not fundamentally true.
Anyway, this exposed some of the techniques that Penn and Teller use, and I started looking for them in other episodes, even those episodes with which I wholeheartedly agreed (in other words, all of them). I found something pretty standard in all their arguments. For their opponent, they usually find the absolute most extreme camp they can find, a camp that probably represents 10% of the other side of the argument, and they use that as the face of the enemy. For example, in their episode on eating and feeding the world, whom did they choose as the antagonist? Greenpeace and a group of hippie-freakshows who only eat raw foods. Of course we're going to disagree with these idiots, therefore agreeing with Penn and Teller. We leave the show thinking that any and all genetically-altered foods should be dumped into the 3rd World, bar none.
What they don't show you are the extremely intelligent, forward thinking scientists who recognize the *legitimate* problems with this. Most notably, while genetic engineering may have saved a billion lives it has also done something else very obvious - drastically increased the population. Therefore, deaths related to overpopulation not associated with starvation - like aids, leprosy, and other illnesses - have drastically increased, inverse to the decrease in deaths from starvation, even exceeding it in some areas. So in trying to do good, we could, in the end, be killing more people. I'm not saying I totally agree with this point of view, just that it is a legitimate facet of the argument that isn't so easily dismissed with a wave of the hand like the ignorance of the losers that Penn and Teller put on camera. So be aware as you watch, that there are almost always more viable arguments against their points that they are not showing you. By consistently choosing only the far spectrum of their opponents, they safely avoid putting an intelligent adversary - which would probably fall somewhere in between Bullsh*t's POV and the extremist they've chosen - into the equation.
This doesn't mean I won't continue to watch regularly and cheer P&T on, or show these episodes to my more gullible friends who may be environmentalists or alternative medicine subscribers. Just understand that more often than not, there is a wide gap between what Penn and Teller are advocating and whom they choose to portray on their show, and in that gap lies a full spectrum of arguments for you to explore.
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